Art in Abu Dhabi

No, it's not a desert mirage. The Louvre Museum, former palace of French kings and one of the most visited tourist and cultural sites in the world, is opening a branch in Abu Dhabi, one of the seven sheikhdoms that make up the United Arab Emirates.

It is a spectacular project worth more than $1 billion. Emirati and French officials, including Louvre president Henri Loyrette, signed the deal Tuesday in Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi is paying France $747 million for loans of art works and management advice from the Louvre, as well as another $520 for the rights to use the Louvre's prestigious name. It will house the museum in a $100 million structure designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, whose most recent celebrated work is the new Musee du quai Branly in Paris. (He also did the magnificent Institute du Monde Arabe in Paris.)

The Louvre is but part of a massive, $27 billion tourism and culture district that Abu Dhabi is constructing on Saadiyat Island. It is also set to include a branch of New York's Guggenheim Museum, which will be designed by American architect Frank Gehry. Iraqi-born British architect is supposed to design a performing arts complex.

It's tempting to call it all an immense vanity project, a fabulously wealthy oil-producing state acquiring brand names in culture the way some of its well-heeled citizens shop the boutiques of Paris for Chanel and Louis Vuitton. Some French critics are complaining that France is selling its soul. A sort of construction-project envy is indeed taking hold in the Gulf, with Dubai and Qatar also building major culture venues.

A question is whether Abu Dhabi's visionaries have a vision. Why pour billions into cultural imports from the West, for example, yet pay relatively scant notice of painting, sculpture, performing arts and literature produced in the Arab world itself? Forget museums; where's the cash to support active Arab artists and musicians, or to provide programs to shape creative, vibrant future generations?

You've also got the problem of whether the authoritarian politics of a place like Abu Dhabi are compatible with the ideals of free expression that are embodied in great museums like the Louvre and the Guggenheim. Will a government that takes the trouble to ink out photographs showing too much feminine flesh in newsstand glossy magazines be prepared to exhibit classic nudes by Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Ingres? Will the pervasiveness of Islam in Gulf societies require a blackout on visiting exhibitions from the Louvre's rich collection of European Christian painting? Can El Greco's 17th century Christ on the Cross be displayed in Abu Dhabi?

Even if there are no satisfactory answers at the moment, Abu Dhabi's dreamers merit some attention and praise. Our post-9/11 lands are ever in need of cross-cultural understanding and museums are a vehicle for achieving that. Millions of annual visitors to the Louvre in Paris become more aware of and enriched by eastern civilizations as they walk through its galleries of Mesopotamian and Egyptian antiquities. In bringing the Louvre and Guggenheim to the heart of Arabia, the sheikhs of Abu Dhabi are daring to showcase the best of what Western culture has to offer--rather than just throwing money at Western jet fighters and consumer goods. If they truly achieve their goal of turning Abu Dhabi into a significant cultural crossroad, the world will be a better place for that.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo