This Eid, browse through the museum’s collection and activities for inspiration.
LOUVRE ABU DHABI x ANGHAMI PLAYLISTS
Louvre Abu Dhabi, in partnership with anghami, the MENA region’s largest music streaming app, launched the first playlists of a series starting their new collaboration Louvre Abu Dhabi x anghami.
Louvre Abu Dhabi x anghami brings you a series of curated playlists to experience the museum’s collection in a different way. Inspired by the museum’s masterpieces, the hand-selected tracks feature a range of eclectic music genres. Mirroring moods and artworks from the galleries, each playlist proposes an alternative and original interpretation of Louvre Abu Dhabi’s unique collection with a bespoke selection of soundtracks that respond to different themes, moods and inspirations found in Louvre Abu Dhabi’s collections.
Set the mood through Louvre’s playlists here.
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Art from Home: The Bactrian Princess
A weekly selection of artwork highlights
Woman dressed in a woollen garment
Oxus civilisation, Central Asia, Bactria, 2300–1700 BCE,Chlorite, calcite, Louvre Abu Dhabi
© Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi. Photo: Thierry Ollivier
This female statuette with an imperious bearing belongs to the Oxus civilisation, which spread in Central Asia in the late 3rd and early 2nd millennium BCE. A network of fortified settlements developed in the areas of deltas in the heart of a territory extending over modern Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and part of Afghanistan. As suppliers of raw materials like metal and lapis lazuli, they traded beyond the mountains and deserts with regions as far away as Mesopotamia, the northern coasts of the Arabian Peninsula, the Iranian plateau and the Indus Valley. Despite the loss of its calcite arms, this statuette is among the masterpieces of its kind. Like the rest of the approximately forty specimens recorded today, it is made up of several detachable parts (headdress or hair, head and dress) in materials of deliberately contrasting colours: green chlorite for the clothing and headdress and white calcite for the exposed parts of the body. While most of these figurines are seated, this one is in a standing position and surpasses most of the others both in height (25 cm) and in the delicacy of its features. The absence of specific attributes and precise archaeological documentation makes it impossible to identify this young woman with any certainty. Sometimes majestic and sometimes rudimentary, these composite figures were frequently placed in the tombs of men and women alike to afford protection in the world beyond the grave. In a world with no writing, this imposing female figure also appeared on certain ceremonial objects, such as goblets, seals and pins, in combat with fantastic creatures (dragons and eagle-headed spirits) in a complex mythological repertory. Of divine nature, she appears to reign over the entire Central Asian pantheon, governing the forces of the underworld and ensuring the rebirth of vegetation and preservation of the cycle of nature and water. The discovery of fragments of comparable statuettes on the sites of Quetta and Harappa in Pakistan, but also at Susa in south-west Iran, confirms the vast network of long-distance trade that characterised the end of the 3rd millennium BCE and connected the Mediterranean with the shores of the Gulf, the Indus Valley and the foothills of the Pamir range.
To hear the in-depth story of Woman dressed in a woollen garment and to take a closer look at the features of this masterpiece, click here.
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Best Art Books to Read from Home
A weekly suggestion by Louvre Abu Dhabi to keep you entertained!
FOR ADULTS:
The Definitive Visual Guide
Andrew Graham-Dixon
This book by Andrew Graham-Dixon shows more than 2,500 of the world’s most influential paintings and sculptures created and gives you the chance to learn everything that needs to be known about art history. From cave paintings to modern masterpieces, this book will also allow you to explore the major milestones of art history.
You will be able to understand how composition, subject matter, technique and style are key to understand the artist’s style, method and intentions.
FOR CHILDREN:
THE RIVER
Alessandro Sanna
Italian illustrator Alessandro Sanna exposes the seasons and the different kinds of experiences and stories that each season brings through his soft watercolours. This book consists of images mostly, beginning with autumn and ending with summer, each of the four seasons as its own chapter and story.
This book will fascinate the young and the old making a person think of their connection to places, geography, settings and even the stories they share. It explains how the flow of time is like a flowing river that carries us with it.
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Make and Play
Learn how to make art inspired by the collection using simple materials with your family
© Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi
Click here to learn how to:
- Make a collage creating a bag inspired by the lines and colours of Mondrian’s painting
- Create an animal mask
- Create your own heroic helmet
- Create a shadow puppet horse inspired by Furusiyya exhibition
- Create a seal stamp
- Create a contemporary scene for an artwork using smartphone
- Make a lantern
- Make a necklace
- Make a Brooch
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Free E-catalogue
Furusiyya: The Art of Chivalry between East and West
© Department of Culture and Tourism-Abu Dhabi
This unique exhibition catalogue explores the ancient roots of chivalry as well as the role of a knight in combat and the different chivalric codes that developed around the world, from Iraq and Syria in the East, to France and Spain in the West. Through over 130 rare artworks from the 10th to the beginning of the 16th centuries, including spectacular arms, armour, and rare manuscripts, discover how some of these practices and the knightly spirit became a past time, and how some of them continue around the world to this day.
Exhibition organised by Louvre Abu Dhabi, Musée de Cluny – Musée National du Moyen Âge and Agence France-Muséums.
Edited by Élisabeth Taburet-Delahaye, Michel Huynh and Carine Juvin
The e-catalogue is available in English, Arabic and French, and can be downloaded for free during the museum’s temporarily closure.
Click here to download the catalogue.
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360 Virtual Tour:
Furusiyya: The Art of Chivalry Between East and West
© Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi
While Louvre Abu Dhabi is temporarily closed, you can still experience the museum’s most recent international exhibition through a 360 virtual tour available on the museum’s website. In this virtual tour, you can navigate throughout the entire exhibition and select 18 of the artworks on view for a closer look through clicking on a digital tag. Pieces include Louvre Abu Dhabi’s spectacular Ottoman Horse Armour from the late 15th century, installed alongside a European Horse and Knight Armour from the first quarter of the 16th century, on loan from Musée de l’armée; a cameo from 260 A.D. depicting the Fight between Emperor Valerian and King Shapur from the collections of Bibliothèque Nationale de France; and the Turban Helmet of Sultan Bajazet II from Musée de l’armée, among other works.
You can start taking the virtual tour here.
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Engage in e-learning resources designed for children, educators and families
© Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi
The Louvre Abu Dhabi learning resources aim to enhance your experience and to extend it to the classroom and homes through engaging questions and interactive activities.
The learning resources invite young and adult visitors to learn actively and make strong connections with the collection and the exhibitions by taking the lead as self-guides who direct their own experiences.
To begin your e-learning journey, click here.
For more information about Louvre Abu Dhabi, please visit www.louvreabudhabi.ae or call +971 600 56 55 66.
