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After three months of critical and popular acclaim, the landmark exhibition The Guggenheim: The Making of a Museum will greet its last visitors on February 4, 2010, having offered audiences in Abu Dhabi and the region an unprecedented experience of art by some of the greatest Western masters of the 20th century including Paul Cézanne, Piet Mondrian, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock.
The closing ceremony and reception will feature “Abstraction in Motion,” a lecture and film screening narrated by John G. Hanhardt, a leading curator and scholar of the development of film and media arts in the 20th century and its evolution up to the present day. Hanhardt will offer an exciting programme of abstract film, video arts, and new media as well as present a rethinking of modern and contemporary art through the work of pioneering moving-image artists.
More than 3,000 visitors per week —including educators, cultural leaders, visitors, and school groups—have attended the exhibition of more than fifty masterful paintings, which was the first presentation in the region of works from the legendary collection of New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the first exhibition presented under the auspices of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, which will open on Saadiyat Island in 2013.
Building on the exhibition, an extensive series of conversations, lectures, tours and family workshops has brought together capacity audiences and outstanding museum leaders, artists, gallerists, collectors, and educators through programmes presented by the Cultural Department of Abu Dhabi’s Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC) and organised in partnership with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and other collaborating institutions.
“We are delighted by the fantastic response to The Guggenheim: The Making of a Museum,” stated His Excellency Mubarak Al Muhairi, Managing Director of TDIC. “Both the exhibition and the programmes advance the cultural dialogue within Abu Dhabi as well as the dialogue between Abu Dhabi and the rest of the world, and our public’s enthusiasm is evidence of the burgeoning art scene in the United Arab Emirates.”
The exhibition, with its accompanying public programmes, opened on November 17, 2009, at the same time as Abu Dhabi celebrated the inauguration of Abu Dhabi Art, its major annual platform for modern and contemporary art. Programmes addressed topics including the role of private art collectors in forming new institutions; the development of the Guggenheim Museum (and, looking ahead, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi); the meaning of abstract art in the context of the Arab world; and abstraction in film and video art. A special series of four-week workshops was also offered for children and families.
Outstanding programme participants from around the world included Richard Armstrong, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Museum; celebrated British art patron and gallerist Anthony d’Offay; prominent United States art collectors Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson; Bruce Altshuler, Director of the Programme in Museum Studies, New York University; Manal Ataya, Director-General of the Sharjah Museums Department; John G. Hanhardt, Curator, Nam Jun Paik Archive, and Consulting Curator of Film and Media Arts, Smithsonian Museum of American Art; Dr. Nasser Rabbat, Aga Khan Professor of the History of Islamic Architecture and Director of the Aga Khan Programme for Islamic Architecture, MIT; artists Ebtisam Abdul Aziz, Dia Al-Azzawi, Kamal Boullata, and Samia Halaby; and Solomon R. Guggenheim curators Susan Davidson, Valerie Hillings, and Karole Vail.
The Guggenheim: The Making of a Museum has been organised collaboratively by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and TDIC. Public programmes were organised by the Cultural Department of TDIC in partnership with the Guggenheim Foundation and other collaborating institutions.
About the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Museum
Founded in 1937, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is dedicated to promoting the understanding and appreciation of art, architecture, and other manifestations of visual culture, primarily of the modern and contemporary periods, and to collect, conserve, and study the art of our time. The Foundation realises this mission through exceptional exhibitions, education programmes, research initiatives, and publications, and strives to engage and educate an increasingly diverse international audience through its unique network of museums and cultural partnerships. Currently the Foundation owns and operates the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue, New York City, and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection on the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy, and also provides programming and management for two other museums in Europe that bear its name, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain, and the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin. With nearly three million annual visitors worldwide, the Guggenheim and its network of museums form one of the most visited cultural institutions in the world. In 2013 the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Museum, a museum of modern and contemporary art designed by architect Frank Gehry, is scheduled to open.
About TDIC
Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC) is a master developer of key cultural, residential, and tourism destinations in Abu Dhabi. The principal goal of its cultural programme, up to and including the creation of the Saadiyat Island Cultural District—the world’s largest single concentration of premier cultural institutions—is to establish an international platform in the UAE for arts and culture.
Unprecedented in scale and scope, the Saadiyat Island Cultural District will include museums such as the Zayed National Museum, the Louvre Abu Dhabi, and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Museum, all due for completion in 2013. Education is essential to fulfilling TDIC’s mission, and this initiative provides opportunities for the local and regional community to participate in programming of the highest quality and be engaged in the city’s urban, cultural, and artistic development, and it enables Emiratis and UAE residents to develop professional skills and knowledge through a dialogue with representatives from the world’s leading cultural organisations.
Alongside the Cultural District project, TDIC presents a diversified programme of art exhibitions, events, and talks aimed at all levels to further engage audiences in the arts.
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