Displaying items by tag: jean nouvel

On the lunar landscape that is Saadiyat Island, the shape of the Louvre Abu Dhabi is gradually emerging from the sand. On the gigantic shorefront site, work continues around the clock. The 5,000-strong workforce is expected to swell to 7,500 over the coming months. “We shall deliver the building at the end of 2015,” its architect Jean Nouvel tells "The Art Newspaper." “Then a few months will be needed to set up the inner structures and hang the works,” he says. The museum’s official opening date, which has not yet been set, will be in 2016.

The building first has to meet the criteria of “excellence” shared by the architect, the Louvre and the emirate, meaning that the safety of the collections is ensured under extreme climatic conditions.

The international jury choosing an architect to design a new National Gallery, which will also provide a new home for the Ludwig Museum in the Hungarian capital, has invited seven leading practices to take part in a new competition after a first competition did not produce a winning design. The seven architects invited to compete for the high-profile commission are: Jean Nouvel, David Chipperfield, Mecanoo, Nieto Sobejano, Renzo Piano, Sanaa and Snøhetta. Launched last week, the competition’s winner is due to be announced next April.

The French architect Jean Nouvel has revealed his modern, airy design for the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC). Located in the heart of Beijing’s cultural district, the 323,000-square-foot museum will house a variety of important collections spanning from the Ming dynasty to the present day.

The NAMOC, which will be in close proximity to the city’s 2008 Olympic stadium, will feature a number of galleries for permanent and temporary exhibitions, research and education centers, a grand terrace, an indoor garden, and an auditorium. According to Nouvel, the NAMOC “resists the laws of gravity while asserting its presence.”

Studio Philippe Apeloig have designed the visual identity for the new Louvre Abu Dhabi (LAD) designed by architect Jean Nouvel. Apeloig chose to symbolize the building’s spiritual dimension and recreate its very particular climate. The challenge was to evoke the mysterious whiteness and lightness of this exceptional space, including the region’s warm temperatures.

The logo’s flat outline alludes, in an abstract fashion, to the horizontal nature of the building’s architecture, which is accentuated by its proximity to the sea. A thick straight line, like a hyphen between two cultures (east and west), hatched with black lines in different directions it illustrates the kinetic effects of light.

The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, one of three museums being built on the windswept Saadiyat Island in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, has been a quieter presence than the two other institutions there. The Louvre Abu Dhabi, designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel, which is scheduled to open next year, and the Zayed National Museum, created by the British architect Norman Foster and to be completed in two years, have each had exhibitions at Manarat Al Saadiyat, the island’s exhibition and visitor center, offering previews of their institutions. Now it is the Guggenheim’s turn.

There is an air of frenetic activity in and around the glassy headquarters of Paris’s Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art. Heavy trucks are delivering strange and hefty packages to the door. Inside the gallery, a giant black question mark is suspended in the air, next to a sleek aircraft that looks like it has made a day trip from the next century. Why are we here, the first work seems to ask? Whatever, I can get us out super-quickly, replies the second. Existential questions get short shrift in the hyper-velocity of today’s contemporary art scene.

The atmosphere is frisky: a birthday is being celebrated. It was 30 years ago that the foundation opened its doors to the public for the first time. It was immediately, and notably, successful. The popular appeal of contemporary art may be a cliché of today’s cultural landscape but it was not so straightforward in 1984. “It was a very different world,” says Alain Dominique Perrin, then-president of the renowned jeweller Cartier International, who masterminded the project.

The Louvre’s new outpost in Abu Dhabi, which is slated to open in December 2015, will showcase highlights from its collection during an exhibition in France in May. “Birth of a Museum” will include over 160 objects and will give visitors a glimpse of the museum’s impressive collection as well as demonstrate the project’s cultural and architectural significance.

Louvre Abu Dhabi’s collection, which includes everything from ancient to contemporary artworks, has been gradually growing since 2009. “Birth of a Museum” will present a rare Greek archaic sphinx, an Italian brooch from the 5th century AD, and paintings by Edouard Manet, Rene Magritte, Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, and Cy Twombly. A similar exhibition was held in Abu Dhabi from April 22 through July 20, 2013, at a gallery on the island of Saadiyat, close to where construction for the new museum is underway.

Louvre Abu Dhabi, which was designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel, aims to be  a place of conversation between civilizations and cultures. Works on view will be drawn from French collections as well as the museum’s own holdings.

“Birth of a Museum” will be on view at the Louvre in Paris from May 2 through July 28.

The Louvre’s new outpost in Abu Dhabi, which is slated to open in 2015, has assembled the 130 paintings, miniatures, sculptures, and other artworks that will form its permanent collection. Museum officials allowed reporters a sneak peek of the works including paintings by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Rene Magritte (1898-1967), Édouard Manet (1832-1883), and Paul Gauguin (1848-1903). The entire collection will be on view from April 22 to July 20, 2013 as part of the exhibition The Birth of a Museum at a gallery on the island of Saadiyat, close to where construction for the new museum is currently underway.

Louvre Abu Dhabi’s collection is comprised of numerous works from private collections, many of which have never been on public view before. Highlights from the museum’s holdings include Picasso’s gouache, ink, and collage work on paper Portrait of a Lady (1928); Gauguin’s Children Wrestling (1888); and Paul Klee’s (1879-1940) Oriental Bliss (1938).

The Louvre’s new venue, which was designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel, is the museum’s first branch outside of France. The venture is expected to bring the Louvre and its French partner museums approximately $1.31 million over 30 years. The Louvre also has an offshoot location in the northern city of Lens.

Twelve years ago, the Folk Art Museum erected a monumental flagship building next door to the Museum of Modern Art on West 53^rd Street in Manhattan. In 2011, after a spate of financial troubles, the Folk Art Museum decided to sell the building to MoMA and move to a smaller outpost. Now, the MoMA is planning to demolish the building to make way for an expansion that will connect to a new tower on the other side of the former Folk Art Museum.

The building, which was designed by notable New York-based architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien and features a sculptural bronze façade, has become a Midtown landmark in a short amount of time. However, MoMA officials decided that the building didn’t mesh well with the museum’s glass façade; it is also set back further than MoMA’s structure, making expansion logistics difficult.

MoMA’s new 82-story building will be designed by French architect Jean Nouvel and constructed by Hines, a Houston-based company. The new structure will include apartments and about 40,000 square feet of gallery space. The Folk Art Museum’s former space will provide an additional 10,000 square feet of exhibition space. The renovation is expected to begin in 2014 by which time the Folk Art Museum’s former home will be leveled.      

Abu Dhabi has finally awarded a $653 million contract to build a branch of the Louvre Museum to Arabtec Holding Co., a Dubai-based construction company, which is partly owned by Abu Dhabi. The Louvre has been planning the outpost since March 2007, but was sidetracked by a number of delays prompted by a public spending review of Abu Dhabi’s government.

The Louvre’s new 688,890-square-foot location, which will be designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel, is expected to open in 2015. The museum’s inauguration will be followed by the opening of the Zayed National Museum, which is being built in association with the British Museum in 2016 as well as a franchise of New York’s Guggenheim Museum in 2017. All three of the museums will be part of a development located off the coast of Abu Dhabi City on Saadiyat Island.

The Louvre Museum in Abu Dhabi is part of the country’s effort to establish itself as a cultural hub as well as a noteworthy tourist destination. Arabtec, which won the project after a competitive bidding process, is expected to begin construction on the museum immediately.