Louvre Abu Dhabi this week launched an exhibition of impressionist masterpieces from the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. With more than 150 paintings, is it the Middle East’s largest collection of impressionist art, charting the rise of one of the art world’s most transformative movements through the pioneering work of Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Manet, Degas and Cezanne.
As Louvre Abu Dhabi prepares to celebrate its fifth anniversary, the impressionist collection draws parallels with the museum’s first special exhibition, five years ago.
Titled "From One Louvre to Another: Opening a Museum for Everyone", the 2017 collection featured 150 masterpieces from the Chateau de Versailles and Louvre Museum Paris, including statues, paintings and ceramics from around the world.
The temporary exhibition revived memories of 17th and 18th-century France, retracing the Parisian museum’s origins to a time when the public began to gain access to French royal collections.
It explored how the collections at Versailles were displayed in the gardens, the state apartments and the king’s private apartment, before exploring how Paris's Louvre palace was transformed into a hotbed of creative energy in the 18th century ― before the 1793 launch of the museum itself in the wake of the French Revolution.
The collection featured the stunning statue, Diana of Versailles, alongside other remarkable works such as the Creation of the World clock, a bronze masterpiece of 18th-century French clockmaking with four complex mechanisms; Jean Garnier's painting Allegory of Louis XIV, Protector of Arts and Sciences from 1672; and the Barberini Vase, made in Syria between 1239 and 1260 — demonstrating the brilliance of Syrian coppersmiths.
From One Louvre to Another focused on way the Louvre in Paris became known as a “universal museum”, acquiring works from across the 19th-century world. This model would later be embodied by Louvre Abu Dhabi, described by its director Manuel Rabate as the Arab world’s first universal museum.
As the exhibition launched, Rabate said: “We are proud to start with this jewel ― it shows the creation of the Louvre in Paris as a universal museum.
“The Louvre in Paris was a transformational milestone in France and we hope to achieve the same with Louvre Abu Dhabi.”
Scroll through images of Louvre Abu Dhabi's Impressionism exhibition below
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Volvo ES90 Specs
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
List of alleged parties
May 15 2020: PM and Carrie attend 'work meeting' with at
least 17 staff members
May 20 2020: PM and Carrie attend 'bring your own booze'
party
Nov 27 2020: PM gives speech at leaving do for his staff
Dec 10 2020: Staff party held by then-education secretary
Gavin Williamson
Dec 13 2020: PM and Carrie throw a flat party
Dec 14 2020: London mayor candidate Shaun Bailey holds staff party at Conservative
Party headquarters
Dec 15 2020: PM takes part in a staff quiz
Dec 18 2020: Downing Street Christmas party
SANCTIONED
- Kirill Shamalov, Russia's youngest billionaire and previously married to Putin's daughter Katarina
- Petr Fradkov, head of recently sanctioned Promsvyazbank and son of former head of Russian Foreign Intelligence, the FSB.
- Denis Bortnikov, Deputy President of Russia's largest bank VTB. He is the son of Alexander Bortnikov, head of the FSB which was responsible for the poisoning of political activist Alexey Navalny in August 2020 with banned chemical agent novichok.
- Yury Slyusar, director of United Aircraft Corporation, a major aircraft manufacturer for the Russian military.
- Elena Aleksandrovna Georgieva, chair of the board of Novikombank, a state-owned defence conglomerate.
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Killing of Qassem Suleimani
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THE SIXTH SENSE
Starring: Bruce Willis, Toni Collette, Hayley Joel Osment
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Rating: 5/5
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Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
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- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
