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Smart
Art Mart
The Gulf states are each vying to be the new cultural
centre of the Middle East
The Medicis made their money out of banking and then, to
atone for the sin of usury, financed the Renaissance.
America's robber barons built grand museums in
provincial locales like Cleveland, Cincinnati and
Chicago. Now, a similar kind of alchemy is turning the
oil of the Persian Gulf into art, in a rush of royal
patronage that may, some day, turn its pocket-sized
monarchies into cultural meccas.
Having stashed away more than a trillion dollars as a
result of high oil prices, the region's ruling families
are racing to see who can embellish their realm with the
best museums, the coolest art fairs, the flashiest
festivals. The sudden recent fall in the oil price from
its midsummer record may yet trim ambitions. But the
scale and number of projects under way is already
transforming the Gulf's string of Arab city-states into
increasingly important stops on the international
culture circuit.
The most recent arrival is Qatar's Museum of Islamic
Art, unveiled on November 22nd before a flown-in crowd
of more than 1,000 dignitaries. Designed by I.M. Pei,
the Chinese-born creator of such landmarks as the Louvre
pyramid, the Bank of China tower in Hong Kong and the
East Building of the National Gallery of Art in
Washington, DC, the simple, stone-faced structure
(pictured above) occupies an artificial island facing
the palm-fringed corniche of Qatar's capital, Doha.
Coffered ceilings and geometric forms pay respect to
Islamic architectural traditions, but the building is
sober rather than sumptuous; more a receptacle than a
showpiece, and well-scaled to the collection inside.
This, the product of a buying spree by the ruling al-Thani
family that began only in the mid-1990s, is modest in
size but wide in range, and packed with high-quality
objects. The pleasing impression is of a private
collector's trove rather than an institution's didactic
taxonomy, enlivened by such nuggets as a silk
wall-hanging that once graced the Alhambra in Granada,
exquisite Persian miniatures from the great 16th-century
Shahnameh of Tahmasp and a jade pendant worn by a Mughal
emperor, Shah Jahan.
The pendant was the subject of a discreet scandal in
2005, when the Qatari buyer, Sheikh Saud al-Thani, a
cousin of the emir, was placed under house arrest after
being accused of misusing public funds in buying art
treasures. A two-year delay in the museum's
construction, tight-lipped responses to questions about
its cost and a high turnover of staff also hint at other
troubles. But Qatar's subjects have reason to be pleased
with the remarkable, beautifully displayed collection
that their ruling family has created.
This may be only the first of several projects.
Officials at the Qatar Museums Authority (QMA), a newly
created body, are coy about what might be in store. What
is known is that Qatari royals, including the emir's
now-forgiven cousin, have been active buyers. Their
purchases range from Chinese gold objects to modernist
paintings, among them an abstract by Mark Rothko, sold
by David Rockefeller last year for $72.8m. “They are
very discreet about money and the direction of
investment, but they are looking for world-class
pieces,” is all a QMA official would say.
Yet it is not Qatari money alone that has inflated art
prices in recent years. Qatar is, according to the IMF,
the world's richest country on a per-head basis. But Abu
Dhabi, the oil-rich anchor among the seven statelets
that make up the United Arab Emirates, has built up a
far bigger cash pile. More discreetly than Qatar's, its
royals are busy kitting out several even more ambitious
projected museums.
At the Emirates Palace, a Versailles-scale hotel on Abu
Dhabi's sleek seafront, an historic photograph opens a
small exhibition displaying plans for a cultural
district on a new island suburb. The black-and-white
picture shows a train of pack camels wading the ford
that, until 50 years ago, was the sole land access to
the Manhattan-sizedand increasingly Manhattan-lookingisland
of Abu Dhabi. The nearby sandflat of Saadiyat, which
will soon be linked to Abu Dhabi by a bridge and by
causeways to the mainland, is to house no fewer than
four new museums and a vast performing-arts centre,
which are themselves the centrepieces of a giant, $27
billion development that includes beach resorts, a giant
marina, golf courses and luxury housing for 170,000
people.
Construction has already begun. By 2018 the shore of the
island is expected to be studded with giant cultural
institutions, each of them rivalling Sydney's famed
opera house in eye-catching monumentality. Frank Gehry,
the California architect who designed the iconic
Guggenheim offshoot in Bilbao, is to create an even
larger, similarly metallic, swirling and shimmering
contemporary-art museum here, under the same brand. The
nearby branch of the Louvre, designed by another
renowned architect, Jean Nouvel, features a village-like
cluster of structures under a giant, translucent shallow
dome intended to filter sunlight like palm fronds. Abu
Dhabi has signed a $1.6 billion contract with France's
national museums, by which the Louvre and its sisters
will lend objects and expertise to the emirate's
franchise for 30 years. Meanwhile, a Japanese architect,
Tadao Ando, has designed an ultra-minimalist arch that
is to function as a maritime museum, and Zaha Hadid, an
Iraqi-born Briton, has conceived a Dalíesque theatre
complex.
Filling all these spaces will not be easy, considering
the emirate's small population, many of whom are
low-paid guest workers. But Abu Dhabi's ambition is not
limited to building signature monuments. It also plans
to be the region's creative hub. To this end, it is,
among other things, sponsoring a project to translate
1,000 of the world's great books into Arabic, launching
a film-production company that plans to inject $1
billion into joint ventures with big Hollywood studios,
and creating what is described as an “ecosystem for
media content creation” that offers incentives to
publishers, television studios and other packagers of
culture.
All this effort is helping Abu Dhabi catch up with its
more boisterous competitor, Dubai. Until recently, the
freewheeling sister emirate was better known for
excessive superlatives such as the world's tallest
building, its biggest indoor ski slope and other catchy
baubles. With much of its money leveraged in giant
property schemes, Dubai has lacked finance for huge
public institutions. But the scale of Dubai's growth has
begun to generate something that is still lacking in
Qatar and Abu Dhabi: a large, well-heeled and discerning
class of art patrons. “There is a significant collector
base emerging here, many of them young, and most of them
Indian, Arab and Iranian expats,” says a Dubai gallery
owner.
In just a few years, contemporary-art galleries have
multiplied in the emirates. The leading London auction
houses are all there, and the Art Newspaper is
considering launching a special Middle Eastern edition,
in English and Arabic. Ideally situated between western
Europe, Russia and India, the Gulf states are rapi dly
taking over from more staid cities, such as Cairo,
Beirut and Tehran. They are already important tourist
destinations. Building great museums to showcase their
treasures should only increase their appeal.
Museum of Islamic Art Qatar
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