The new opening date of Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, designed by the famous architect Frank Gehry, has been announced as 2025. The Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi, whose opening has been long-awaited and delayed many times, will open in 2025, nearly 20 years after the plans were revealed and 14 years after construction began.
Plans for the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi were first announced in 2006. Work began on the site in 2011, but the project was then put on hold for several years. The news of the new opening date, announced by the Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism, comes two years after the Guggenheim Foundation confirmed that construction was restarting.
“It is truly thrilling to see this project enter into this new phase. I hope that this building is embraced by the people of the UAE and that this work will endure as a landmark for the country for many years to come,” Gehry said.
Guggenheim Abu Dhabi will be part of the culture and arts complex on Saadiyat Island, which aims to make the UAE capital a major cultural destination. Other buildings on Saadiyat Island include the Louvre Abu Dhabi, designed by Jean Nouvel, the first outpost of the Louvre Museum outside France.
These two structures will later be accompanied by Foster + Partners’ Zayed National Museum, Zaha Hadid’s Performing Art Center (TBC), and Tadao Ando’s Maritime Museum (TBC).
Gehry’s museum design consists of a cluster of galleries of varying heights, shapes, and characters. These galleries are distributed around the atrium on four floors, connected by glass bridges. The museum features 11 iconic cone-like structures that offer a total of 13,000 square meters of gallery space and more exhibition space. Each of the cones will showcase unique, site-specific artworks by leading contemporary artists.
Covering 42,000 square meters, the museum has the distinction of being the largest Guggenheim ever built, surpassing the Guggenheim Bilbao, also designed by Gehry. The museum also includes an education center for children, a 350-seat theatre, archives, a library, a conservation laboratory, and an arts and technology center.* The information in this article is compiled from dezeen.com and designboom.com articles.
