Abu Dhabi: Louvre Symposium Museums ‘Reframing Museums’
In recent years, museums have faced heightened criticism, from the rules surrounding funding to the recovery of lost artefacts. At present, after the Black Lives Matter campaign, and massive redundancies in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, the discussion has moved towards questions of social injustice and representation. For an online symposium, the Louvre Abu Dhabi and New York University (NYU) Abu Dhabi have come together to discuss the existing problems and obligations that museums must face, as well as their position in the future. It will be held from Monday to Wednesday, 16 to 18 November, to coincide with the museum’s third anniversary, called Reframing Museums.
The symposium will concentrate on three fields: selection, construction / site, and individuals. The first looks at museum procurement procedures, while the second explores the importance of the physical environment of a museum in the light of openings and travel limits in the wake of the pandemic. The third reflects on the museum’s civic position, how it serves and how its citizens and their traditions are represented. Reframing Museums draws on an earlier symposium organized by NYU Abu Dhabi in 2010, long before the Louvre Abu Dhabi opened its doors to discuss the UAE ‘s future museum environment at the time. University vice chancellor Mariet Westermann says she spoke with museum director Manuel Rabate last November to learn about how these problems have changed over the past decade.
As the pandemic hit, the two agreed to recalibrate their style to resolve the most urgent challenges actually affecting cultural institutions. It is going to be one of the first times on the global scene, in the history of museums, that we are going to have this kind of discussion. “We have been worrying about the effect of the recession on the world of museums and the history of art in recent months,” says Rabate. The list of roundtable topics and case studies to be discussed at the symposium is yet to be released, but participants will include Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, chairman of the Louvre Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism, and Jean-Luc Martinez, president of the Paris Louvre Museum. Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi of the Sharjah Art Foundation, Manal Ataya of the Sharjah Museums Authority, Max Hollein of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Kaywin Feldman of the National Gallery of Art, Washington , DC, Eugene Tan of the Singapore Art Museum, and Peter Magee of the Zayed Museum, among others, will also be among the directors of institutions in the UAE and abroad. The programme will also have a central figure in science, community and race theory, Kwame Anthony Appiah. Appiah, a British Ghanaian, has written widely on race and ethics, and is currently teaching philosophy and law at the University of New York.
No artists or curators have been included in the speaker list so far. The organizers have announced, however, that they will host talks between the invited directors of the museum and emerging curators from all over the world, but they will be held privately. The symposium’s issues are important not only to the global state, but also to the Louvre Abu Dhabi and NYU Abu Dhabi, foreign organisations that have come from abroad to set up their own independent locations in the Middle East. While the museum will work on these issues within its own activities, Rabate says, the Louvre Abu Dhabi will not be the subject of the discussion.
As a form of organization , it is necessary to understand that the university is an international entity since information is universal. It is quite foreign and local in Abu Dhabi and the UAE society itself, so we feel it is our job to collaborate with, rely on and represent all those domains of the population.
