For the first time, Abu Dhabi has begun to set out what visitors will encounter inside Guggenheim Abu Dhabi – the long-awaited cultural landmark designed by Frank Gehry on Saadiyat Island.
At a briefing, Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, chairman of Abu Dhabi's Department of Culture and Tourism, described a museum that will look far beyond the familiar western canon, expanding the story of contemporary art to include regions and movements often left in the margins.
Although the institution will include works by figures such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Al Mubarak said they will appear in a very different context to what audiences may expect.
“They're going to be within that collection, but right next to them, you'll have amazing contemporary artists that maybe, unfortunately, the vast public don't know much about – artists from South-East Asia, artists from Asia, artists from North Africa, Central Africa and the Arab world,” he said.
The ambition, Al Mubarak said, is to create a museum that is genuinely global, in its collection and its worldview.
“Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is going to be a lot more than a museum. It’s really a civic space. It’s a place that brings people together with music, food, dance and, of course, contemporary art.”
The collection will focus on work from the 1960s to the present day, with contemporary art from an international perspective rather than through a Euramerican lens.
“The collection itself is truly global,” Al Mubarak said. “It was imperative for us when we were assembling that collection that it focuses on contemporary artists who have not been given the light they deserve, whether it’s because of their geographical location or their gender. We want to be unbiased in that.”
He added that indigenous art will be “highly, highly focused” within the museum’s holdings, placing it in dialogue with global art movements and with works across the wider Saadiyat Cultural District.
The building is conceived as a space that breaks from traditional gallery models.
“Frank Gehry has worked with us in creating a beautiful architectural feat,” Al Mubarak said.
The museum will feature gallery types that differ from standard white cubes, allowing for site-specific installations, commissions and hybrid programming.
“Some will be given specifically for artists to be commissioned for an entire gallery. The cones will have amazing commissions. You will have galleries that will continuously have rotating artists. You will have spaces where we marry live performances with art.”
Al Mubarak said the project was an attempt to imagine a museum for the decades ahead, not simply a contemporary version of an established formula. “As much as possible, we’ve looked to think about, what does the 22nd-century museum look like?”
That includes the way visitors encounter the work. Al Mubarak said the team is exploring the use of technologies such as augmented reality and artificial intelligence alongside human storytelling to deepen audience engagement.
“We’re using AR and AI in some cases and human storytelling of course. I don’t want a visitor at the Guggenheim to come and say ‘this is a beautiful Warhol’, with a little panel that tells them this Warhol was painted at this time and that’s it, thank you very much.
“That’s easy, that’s boring. What I want to know is, what was Warhol thinking at the specific time? Where was he living? What was going on with the environment around him?”
Around the museum, themes will guide how works are placed in relation to one another. “In some cases, there are collective routines, such as connectivity and belonging. Some of them are specifically focused on themes based on emotion. Some of them are based on time,” Al Mubarak said.
All of this, he emphasised, is about offering visitors a new way of seeing contemporary art – one that reflects how globalised artistic production truly is, while also challenging hierarchies of visibility. “Any visitor will come here into a voyage of knowledge,” he said.
Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is in its final stages of preparation. When it opens, it will join Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi, and the coming Zayed National Museum to form a unified cultural district on Saadiyat – one that Al Mubarak says is designed to connect people as much as it displays art.
