ABU DHABI: Masterpieces by Leonardo da Vinci and Vincent van Gogh will be among 300 works displayed at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the emirate said Sunday.
The museum, built at a cost of 500 million euros ($630 million) and set to open in December 2015, will feature paintings and sculptures from 13 of France’s most renowned collections spanning from pre-Bronze Age to Pop Art, it said in a statement.
“This will be the first time many of these works will travel to Abu Dhabi or even the Middle East, and are a rare opportunity to see important art from French museums,” said Sultan bin Tahnoon Al-Nahyan, chairman of the organization behind the project.
The loaned works include da Vinci’s Portrait of an Unknown Woman, Claude Monet’s Saint Lazare Station and Andy Warhol’s Big Electric Chair, as well as ancient statues, vases and masks from across Asia and Africa.
Many of France’s grand museums, including the Louvre, Musee d’Orsay and the Palace of Versailles will loan art to Abu Dhabi as part of a 30-year collaboration with the Emirate worth one billion euros. French Culture Minister Fleur Pellerin said the loaning of the works was “an acknowledgement of both the extraordinary richness of our national collections and the expertise of our museums.”
The 64,000-square-meter Louvre Abu Dhabi, built on the island of Saadiyat, will have 6,000 square meters dedicated to permanent installations and 2,000 set aside for temporary exhibitions.
300 masterpieces from French museums set for Louvre Abu Dhabi
300 masterpieces from French museums set for Louvre Abu Dhabi
UN humanitarian chief’s fresh funding call as Sudan crisis passes 1,000 days amid famine, mass displacement
- ‘Today we are signaling that the international community will work together to bring this suffering to an end,’ Tom Fletcher tells fundraising event in Washington
- Sudan is a central pillar of the UN’s global humanitarian plan for 2026, which aims to save 87m lives worldwide, he adds
NEW YORK CITY: The UN on Tuesday launched a renewed appeal for funding and the political backing to address what it described as the catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Sudan, which has now been locked in civil war for more than 1,000 days.
Speaking at a fundraising event for Sudan in Washington, organized by the US Institute for Peace, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Tom Fletcher, said the scale of the suffering in Sudan had reached intolerable levels marked by famine, mass displacement and widespread sexual violence against women and girls.
“The horrific humanitarian crisis in Sudan has endured more than 1,000 days — too long,” he said. “Too many days of famine, of brutal atrocities, of lives uprooted and destroyed.”
The global community was now united in its desire to halt the suffering and ensure life-saving aid reaches those most in need, Fletcher said.
“Today we are signaling that the international community will work together to bring this suffering to an end,” he added.
Sudan is a central pillar of the UN’s global humanitarian plan for 2026, which aims to save 87 million lives worldwide, Fletcher explained as he thanked donors, including the US, the EU and the UAE, for stepping forward.
“Sudan is the most important component of that plan,” he said, noting that humanitarian operations there have been chronically underfunded and plagued by danger. “We have lost hundreds of colleagues in Sudan, colleagues of incredible courage.”
The UN plans to provide food, medicine, water and sanitation services to more than 14 million people across Sudan this year, as well as protection for vulnerable groups, Fletcher said.
He stressed that funding alone would not be sufficient, however, and called for stronger measures to protect civilians and aid workers, secure humanitarian access and support a temporary truce between the warring factions.
“The money is not enough,” he said. “We need the air assets, the security, the medical support for our teams, and the mediation work that has to underpin the access.”
The UN will work, through the Sudan Humanitarian Initiative, with the so-called “Quad” group of international partners (the US, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE) and others to identify priority areas for urgent action and remove obstacles to the delivery of aid, Fletcher said.
He added that the UN seeks visible progress toward a humanitarian truce in Sudan within the next few weeks, and called for those guilty of any violations in the country to be held accountable.
“We have set a target date of the beginning of Ramadan to make visible progress on this work,” Fletcher said. Ramadan is expected to begin on or around Feb. 17 this year.
Quoting UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, he added that the urgency of ending the conflict was growing as the third anniversary of its outbreak on April 15, 2023, approaches.
“The guns must fall silent and a path to peace must be charted,” Fletcher said, adding that the UN fully supports efforts to secure a humanitarian truce and rapidly scale up aid across Sudan.
“Today, we’re saying, ‘Enough.’ Let today be the signal that the world is uniting in solidarity for practical impact.”
