When Guggenheim Abu Dhabi opens its doors later this year, it will mark more than the expansion of one of the world’s best-known museum networks.
For Mariët Westermann, director and chief executive of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, the museum offers an opportunity to reconsider how modern and contemporary art is presented — and whose stories have traditionally been left out.
The Abu Dhabi institution, which has been in development for roughly two decades, will become the fourth Guggenheim museum, joining New York, Venice and Bilbao. But its location and collection are intended to give it a distinct role within the network rather than simply replicate the model of its older counterparts.
Westermann, a Dutch art historian who previously served as vice-chancellor of NYU Abu Dhabi, believes the museum’s position between different cultural worlds can become central to its identity.
A different starting point for modern art
The collection focuses on international art from around 1960 to the present, with particular attention to artists and movements from regions that have historically received less space in major Western museum narratives.
For Westermann, the choice of 1960 is significant. It was a period of rapid decolonisation, political transformation and intellectual experimentation across Asia, Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere.
Rather than presenting modern art as a story that begins primarily in Europe and the United States, the museum aims to explore the parallel forms of modernism that developed across different societies — and the connections between them.
That approach also extends to artistic traditions that have often been treated as peripheral to the conventional history of modern art.
Westermann points to practices such as calligraphy, as well as artistic relationships with nature and landscape, as examples of traditions that can offer alternative ways of understanding how artists responded to the changing world after the 1960s.
Her ambition is not simply to rewrite an established history of art, but to allow multiple histories to emerge alongside it.
A museum shaped by its location
The building itself reinforces that ambition.
Designed by Frank Gehry, the Abu Dhabi Guggenheim covers around 42,000 square metres, making it the largest of the four Guggenheim sites. Its design incorporates 10 monumental cones inspired in part by the region’s traditional wind towers, alongside courtyards designed to make use of natural cooling.
The museum sits on Saadiyat Island, which has developed into one of the world’s most ambitious cultural districts. It is already home to Louvre Abu Dhabi and is set to host institutions including the Zayed National Museum and the Natural History Museum.
The scale of the cultural development has raised questions about whether the island can attract a sufficiently large audience. But the Louvre Abu Dhabi recorded around 1.4 million visitors last year, suggesting that the region has developed a significant international and domestic audience for major cultural institutions.
Westermann describes that audience as unusually diverse, bringing together Emirati citizens, expatriates, tourists and people from the many nationalities represented in the UAE.
Two decades in the making
The long development of Guggenheim Abu Dhabi has not been without controversy.
The project has faced years of delays as well as scrutiny over labour conditions surrounding its construction. By the time Westermann took over at the foundation, however, many of those difficulties were no longer part of the project’s immediate development.
She views the lengthy gestation period differently: as time that allowed both the building and its collection to evolve.
Acquisition began around 18 years ago and has been conducted jointly with Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism. As with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the works are owned by the local authorities, while Guggenheim specialists have played a significant role in advising on the collection.
Westermann has declined to discuss the project’s financial arrangements, although she says the museum has the resources required for its operation.
A global network with local roots
The Abu Dhabi project also reflects Westermann’s broader effort to strengthen connections between the four Guggenheim institutions.
Since taking over the foundation, she has built a senior leadership team spanning New York, Bilbao, Venice and Abu Dhabi, with the institutions expected to collaborate more closely on exhibitions, loans and expertise.
That network could give Abu Dhabi access to the Guggenheim’s international resources while allowing its own collection and geographical position to influence the wider institution.
For Westermann, the relationship between a global cultural organisation and its host city cannot simply be managed from a distance. It requires long-term engagement and an understanding of local circumstances.
Her previous experience at NYU Abu Dhabi has shaped that approach. She argues that international institutions can preserve their core principles while adapting to the cultural and social context in which they operate.
That principle is particularly relevant in Abu Dhabi, where the Guggenheim is arriving as part of a much broader state-backed investment in culture and education.
Beyond the Western canon
The museum’s most consequential challenge may therefore have little to do with its architecture.
Its significance will depend on whether it can turn its ambition for a more interconnected history of modern art into a convincing museum experience.
For decades, major institutions have expanded their collections to include artists from outside Europe and North America. But Westermann’s argument goes further: the goal is to examine the exchanges between cultures rather than simply add previously overlooked artists to an existing Western framework.
Abu Dhabi’s geography gives that idea a natural setting. Positioned between Europe, Asia and Africa, the city has long been shaped by movement between different cultures and regions.
Guggenheim Abu Dhabi intends to make that movement part of its artistic identity.
The museum’s opening will therefore add another landmark to Saadiyat Island. But Westermann is positioning it as something more ambitious: a place where the conventional boundaries of modern art can be questioned and where different artistic histories can be presented as interconnected rather than peripheral to a single dominant narrative.
Whether that vision changes the wider museum landscape remains to be seen. For now, after two decades of planning, the Guggenheim’s newest chapter is finally about to begin.
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