Bad Blood Aired Over $33-Million Abu Dhabi Gift to Louvre
May 9, 2013 | Read Time: 1 minute
A letter leaked to a French newspaper shines a light on a flap between French authorities and the leaders of Abu Dhabi over the Louvre’s failure to use $32.8-million donated by the Arab emirate in 2007, writes The Art Newspaper.
The gift was to have supported the conversion of a floor at the Paris museum’s Pavillon de Flore, now used as a center for conservators, into a public space named for Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the founder of the United Arab Emirates. The Louvre and Abu Dhabi are in talks to find another project in which to invest the money and honor the sheikh.
The February 2012 letter from the emirate’s chief culture and tourism official to the-then director of the Louvre was revealed in an article last month by the French paper Libération. It also highlighted bad feelings over how artworks are being procured for the planned Louvre Abu Dhabi, in which the emirate has invested some $1.3-billion.
