Des nouvelles du Guggenheim Abu

The Abu Dhabi Curatorial Advisory group, made up of ten of the most significant curators and administrators from the region and its environs met in New York July 24–26 for a discussion to help shape the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Museum. Members including Jack Persekian, Creative Director of the Sharjah Biennial, and William Wells, Director of the Townhouse Gallery in Cairo, proved to be enormously valuable in understanding the potential promise of a major, global, contemporary art institution in the Middle East. Prior to arriving in New York, the group traveled to Abu Dhabi to make a site visit and study the Cultural District Master Plan exhibition in the Emirates Palace Hotel. Many also visited Bilbao to examine the exemplary Guggenheim Museum in the Basque region.

http://www.guggenheim.org/abu-dhabi/about/cultural-district

http://www.tdic.ae/

The Saadiyat Island Cultural District will be home to five major institutions designed by internationally renowned architects, including the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Museum, the Louvre Abu Dhabi, a maritime museum, and a performing arts center, as well as and a park with pavilions designed to host international art, architecture, and other cultural fairs and events. It will also boast city-facing quayside hotels, exclusive villas, shops, and the first liberal arts overseas campus of New York University. The guiding principles for the Cultural District are to make it, by definition, a destination that everyone in the world of art and culture would visit regularly. By building this set of permanent institutions, the Cultural District is poised to have the world’s greatest concentration of cultural experiences.For more information, visit the official Web sites for Saadiyat Island and Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC).

the Zaha Hadid calogue

The first woman to be awarded the distinguished Pritzker Architecture Prize, in 2004, Zaha Hadid is internationally known for projects that have literally "shifted the geometry of buildings." The Iraqi-born, London-based architect has collaborated with the Guggenheim on several projects leading up to this comprehensive retrospective, including the design for the museum's exhibition, The Great Utopia in 1992. True to Hadid’s interdisciplinary approach to architecture, all media will be covered here.