My previous post looked at Dubai museums. Now we’ll move on to Abu Dhabi and Doha in this post. To say that Abu Dhabi has been on museum building binge is actually a bit of an understatement. The Zayed National Museum, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, and the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi, as well as teamLab Phenomena Abu Dhabi were all under active construction while I was there and are all scheduled to open imminently.
I only had a day in Abu Dhabi, so I missed sites like the 421 Arts Campus contemporary arts center and the Emirates National Auto Museum. But I did visit two very different starchitect projects: Louvre Abu Dhabi, and the Abrahamic Family House, both of which provided great examples of the challenges and opportunities of designing for visitor engagement.
Louvre Abu Dhabi
Like its progenitor in Paris, Louvre Abu Dhabi proudly proclaims its place as a universal museum, and it aspires to cover the breadth of human history. And in that it succeeds, thanks to the Louvre’s tremendous holding which are augmented by objects from UAE sources and others.
It was interesting to see how that universal mission received the added imperative of “interdependency” in Abu Dhabi, which was a theme of my whole time in the UAE. The government clearly has been hard at work for a long time to inculcate this idea of “We’re all in this together” and that the UAE are committed to being seen as bridge builders and promoters of tolerance.
There is a lot to like about the Louvre Abu Dhabi. The collection is fantastic. The cross-cultural displays give a very different flavor to your understanding of world history, regardless of the level. I saw things I’ve never seen before and saw types of objects I’m familiar with displayed in new ways and interpreted in relation to other objects in very progressive fashion. Also, the architecture is amazing, the visitor service is great, and the restaurant has a great view!
Given the museum’s budget, all the attention to detail, and stunning level of finish on everything, I was surprised by how often I found myself unable to get what the museum was trying to telling me, because basic visitor needs had been sacrificed, probably to the architectural vision, of the museum. The photo on the left above is blurry, but in this case it’s OK, because it’s sitting on the floor and I couldn’t see it with my glasses off, or on, unless I got on all fours to read it. The photo on the right (taken by a very obliging, if confused, French tourist) shows me bent over trying to read the object label for a painting mounted at adult eye height. My glasses would fall off whenever I would try to read one of these labels.
I was really pleased to see how much additional interpretation was provided. I had expected to only find insanely long text panels and tombstone labels, and not much else, but was continually pleased to find multimedia and tactile displays in multiple galleries. That made it all the more heartbreaking to find them continually mounted in out of the way places, so that it required work to understand which objects they were meant to be interpreting.
A few examples: On the left above is a video mounted behind and to the side of the sculptures it’s talking about. In the center, a marvelous 3D printed tactile display of a figurine mounted facing the back of the object in its case. To see the face of the object, you’d have to walk a good 4-5 meters to get around this really long case. On the right is a tactile interpreting an architectural frieze on the far side of the gallery behind a row of display cases and (usually) visitors.
Clearly, they’re thinking about visitor engagement, but there’s room to iterate and evolve their practice.
The Abrahamic Family House
The biggest surprise of the trip for me, was taking Christophe Buffet‘s suggestion to visit The Abrahamic Family House, a project of the UAE government dedicated to the pursuit of peaceful coexistence, especially among the world religions that trace their descent back to Abraham, namely Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
The House is home to three functioning houses of worship, each designed by Sir David Adjaye to the exact same measurements, 30m x 30m x 30m on the outside. It also is home a fourth space, a forum for gatherings and interfaith dialogue. In a region where most of the UAE’s neighbors have government offices policing religion, this is a pretty bold statement.
The visitor experience is very compelling. The House functions both as a cultural center for visitors to learn about the Abrahamic faiths and their considerable areas of overlap. It also serves as home to three different congregations of three different faiths with long, difficult histories of conflict with each other that continues to this day. Balancing the conflicting needs of those audience segments was handed in a remarkably respectful and intentional manner, which were themes of my visit. Respect and intentionality made concrete.
To accomplish this, the site is very particularly laid out. Each house of worship can be closed off from the rest of the complex and a has a dedicated gate to the street which can be opened so that congregants can go straight into worship and out again without mingling with the people visiting the House, and vice versa. It’s a real architectural tour de force to have fit all those needs into one site that feels like a cohesive whole.
I took a guided tour of the House with a very knowledgeable guide who was able to convey the level of thought and care that went into each building, the major tenets of each of the three faiths, and specifics about the congregations that worship there. I did not go to the UAE expecting to learn anything about the iconography of synagogues, but I did.
I could go on at length about all the various parts of the visit that I found moving, but I’ll only share the big one, which, in my opinion, is their dedication to doing something hard, and not settling for half measures.
How many cultural institutions have objects that have been denuded of their original purpose, particularly religious ones? Museums are full of bits of old temples, sometimes even complete ones, that are relegated to being appreciated for aesthetic or ethnographic purposes. The Abrahamic Family House made the decision to not just make replicas or display versions of houses of worship, but do the hard work of making authentic, living ones. Contrast this to more typical stories, like the Khmer dancer who was asked to leave the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC for dancing in front of a Khmer temple statue, which is a traditional form of worship in Khmer culture.
Doha
Doha is an interesting contrast to the over-the-top commercialism of Dubai, and the blue chip franchises of Abu Dhabi. It’s every bit as modern and gleaming, but a bit more subdued and possibly conservative. But the cultural offerings are every bit as varied, and some of my recent favorite museum experiences. Thanks to my gracious host Christophe Buffet I got an action-packed tour of some of the city’s cultural attractions.
Mathaf: the Arab Museum of Modern Art
Mathaf was a revelation. It’s mission is to display modern and contemporary art from the Arab world as well as its historical connections to the wider world. While we were there, we took in an exhibition on European orientalism featuring the work of the French painter Gérôme and examining the wider impact of Orientalist art. Seeing these paintings in an Arab country was fascinating, as was the additional Arab works displayed as counterpoints. In retrospect, it was a throughline of my whole visit, this engagement with the historical Western narrative, and recontextualizing it for the local audience and the Gulf region. In the Gulf one can watch a culture being created in almost real time.
Mathaf’s collection was full of artists I hadn’t seen, as well as old friends like Gazbia Sirry and M. F. Husain. I wished I’d spent longer there.
Qatar National Library
When Christophe suggested we visit the National Library, I was a bit surprised. Once we arrived, it became clear why. From the outside, it looks like a gigantic spaceship (it’s meant to evoke an opened book) and was remarkably busy for a weekday afternoon. The space is remarkable, the open stacks invite you to wander about, and the public areas were all busy. There families visiting, college students studying, public programs taking place in event spaces. It was the first time on my trip I’d been in a cultural space that felt like it was being well-used by the local populace and not just tourists.
National Museum of Qatar (NMoQ)
My next stop was National Museum of Qatar. I gave a version of my ICOM to some of the younger Qatari digital staff and then had a lively Q & A afterward. I love talking to the rising generation of museum professionals. They never fail to give me hope and energy with their enthusiasm and understanding of the problems the sector faces.
I was particularly excited to see the National Museum of Qatar. I know several of the consultants who worked on the project and was eager to see it with my own eyes. And it did not disappoint. The building is another Jean Nouvel design, this time mimicking a mineral formation found in the Gulf called a desert rose. The building, which is long and low, looks like a huge cluster of intersecting circular planes and provides ample space to get out of the sun, and wraps round both sides of the old palace of the rulers of Qatar, making the visitor path a long loop.
As the national museum of a small country, NMoQ’s mission is to celebrate everything about the past, present and future of Qatar and its people, from archaeology and geology, to history, art and more. Like the Etihad Museum in Dubai, the pride and traditions of Qataris are on full display for locals and international visitors, along with meditations on the rapid change and modernization that have radically remade the country.
A Tale of Two Museums
I was glad to have seen both Louvre Abu Dhabi and NMoQ basically back to back, because they illustrate the importance of experience design and why I had such different experiences in these buildings. I felt the visitor experience in the Louvre took a back seat to both the architecture and to a fairly traditional object treatment.
Both the Louvre Abu Dhabi and NMoQ are newly built museums. Both are “starchitect” designed buildings, with all the added pressure of maintaining a living architect’s vision, while also bringing the interiors to life. Even better in this case, they’re both Jean Nouvel buildings, so we can eliminate the old “blame the architect” trope that often get trotted out in new buildings to explain any insuperable hurdles in the experience design/build process.
In the case of Louvre Abu Dhabi and NMoQ, it’s interesting because architecturally, the Louvre is a much friendlier building. It has big, straight walls, loads of right angles and all sorts of features that make displaying objects easy. By contrast, NMoQ is a looping, organic series of spaces where none of the walls are flat or vertical, the ceiling and floor levels vary, and each gallery has a different flow. So which one was the more experiential? The much more challenging space of NMoQ.
The integration of objects, media, and immersives at NMoQ is truly remarkable. Each space telegraphs its subject matter through the use of immersive video backgrounds that provide context for the objects without overwhelming them. The object display formats are varied and interesting and often displayed in groupings that highlight their original uses. They make good use of video of people that made the spaces feel alive and human, and not containers for objects. Though both museums employed many of the same interpretive devices and strategies, like tactile displays, interactives, and ambient soundscapes, only NMoQ felt like a cohesive, immersive visitor experience that was telling a unified story.
The most telling thing I realized was that I’d taken virtually no still photos, only videos, because all the galleries felt so active. I actually had to run back through the museum, madly snapping photos so I could have images to show folks.
Museum of Islamic Art
Our final stop was to the Museum of Islamic Art on the waterfront. By now, it was almost not worth noting that it was designed by another famous architect. There are so many around that it is overwhelming. (It was I.M.Pei’s final completed commission, btw.)
The museum juts out into the harbor at the end of a long park-covered jetty. The cover image on this article was taken from there. The museum floats in the harbor like a fortress with dhows moored on one side and a Blade Runner-esque skyline on the other which neatly sums up where the Gulf states are in 2025. Inside, the building makes extravagant use of Islamic geometric motifs throughout and contains both grand public spaces, and more theatrical, intimate gallery spaces.
It had been awhile since I’d been in a real black box style museum, and the low light levels really took some getting used to. Given the amount of textiles and paper on display, it makes sense that light levels were low, but my aging eyes really struggled at times. Thankfully, there were quite a few nice accessibility gestures throughout, like tactile floorplans on every floor and varied seating.
After that, it was dinner in the souk and then off to the airport first thing the next morning. And with that, the trip was over.
Though I felt bad that it has taken me so long to write about this trip, looking at it from some distance has the benefit of distilling all the sights and sounds into what was truly memorable. After several months, I am really impressed at how much innovation and well-thought-out visitor engagement strategies are being employed at many of the institutions I visited. There is a lot to be learned from seeing how others do the hard work of capturing visitors’ attention, and I hope I return sooner rather than later to see the next crop of new museums and attractions that are opening in the Gulf.