Table Of ContentW O R L D S
IN A
M U S E U M
W O R L D S
I N A
M U S E U M
Exploring Contemporary Museology
Leuven University Press
This book was published following the symposium Worlds in a Museum/ Des mondes en musées / فحتلما باحر في
held 10-11 November 2018 at Louvre Abu Dhabi on the occasion of its first anniversary and jointly organised
by Louvre Abu Dhabi and École du Louvre.
Louvre Abu Dhabi
Publications
Laurent Germeau, Publications Manager
Amanda Nicole Smith, Project Manager
Mohamed Zaggar, Senior Editor
Brian Kerrigan, Senior Visual and Images Officer
Scientific, Curatorial and Collection Management
Souraya Noujaim, Scientific, Curatorial and Collections Management Director
Guilhem André, Chief Curator – Asian and Medieval Arts
Rose-Marie Mousseaux, Chief Curator – Early Modern Period
École de Louvre
Publications
Françoise Blanc, Head of Publications and Symposiums (Responsable des Éditions et colloques)
Published by Leuven University Press, Louvre Abu Dhabi and École du Louvre, 2020
© Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi, 2020
Louvre Abu Dhabi, Saadiyat Cultural District, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
© 2020 by Leuven University Press / Presses Universitaires de Louvain / Universitaire Pers Leuven
Minderbroedersstraat 4, B-3000 Leuven (Belgium).
All rights reserved. Except in those cases expressly determined by law, no part of this publication may be
multiplied, saved in an automated datafile or made public in any way whatsoever without the express prior
written consent of the publishers.
ISBN 978 94 6270 233 2
e-ISBN 978 94 6166 332 0
D / 2020/ 1869 / 59
NUR: 657
Project management: Amanda Nicole Smith
Arabic translation: Bahia Zemni
English translation: Timothy Stroud
English editing: Simon Ferdinand
French editing: Françoise Blanc
Arabic editing: Mohamed Zaggar
Typesetting: Crius Group
Cover design: Bart van den Tooren
Cover illustration: Detail of a pair of namban six-fold screens: Portuguese Arriving in Japan for Trade,
Japan, c. 1625, Ink, colours, gold and gold leaf on paper, 171 x 376.6 cm, Louvre Abu Dhabi, inv. LAD
2015.018.001 © Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi/ Photo: Thierry Ollivier
www.lup.be | www.louvreabudhabi.ae | www.ecoledulouvre.fr
Table of Contents
New Identities of Museums in a Globalised World 9
Foreword by Manuel Rabaté
“It Always Seems Impossible Until It Is Done” 11
Foreword by Mohamed Al Mubarak
A Universal Curriculum: École du Louvre and the Global Classroom 13
Introduction by Claire Barbillon
A World in Dialogue: Introducing Louvre Abu Dhabi 17
Introduction by Souraya Noujaim
PART 1
Museums and Globalisation
Introduction: L’Imagination au Pouvoir! Challenges and Perspectives for
Universal Museums in the Twenty-First Century 23
Noëmi Daucé
Global History and the Art Museum 25
James Cuno
Dialogue Among Cultures: A Challenge for Museums of the Future 37
Hartwig Fischer
Unity in Diversity: One Louvre Among the Three Louvres in the Twenty-First
Century 41
Jean-Luc Martinez
PART 2
Globalisation and Societies
Introduction: Universality, Globalisation, and Museums: Narratives of Material
Cultures 51
Rose-Marie Mousseaux
Preserving Pasts, Investing in Futures: The Developing Landscape of Bahrain’s
Museums 53
H.E. Shaikha Mai bint Mohammed Al Khalifa
Premodern Globalisations: Cultural Connectivity and Objects-in-Motion in
Ancient Worlds 57
Martin Pitts
Universal History, Global History, and Universal Museums 71
Hervé Inglebert
PART 3
Global/Local Tensions
Introduction: Local and Global: A Complex Field of Tension 87
Guilhem André
Connecting Canons: Critiques of the Western Canon in Recent Art
Historiography 89
Cecilia Hurley
Universal Museum, Global Museum: The Example of Lyon 107
Sylvie Ramond
Which Worlds Belong in a Museum? A Manifesto for a Humanist Museum 127
Nathalie Bondil
PART 4
Centre and Periphery
Introduction: Centre and Periphery or Circulation and Dialogue? 141
Sophie Mouquin
Centering Nationhood: Centrality and Peripherality in the Museal Culture
of Contemporary Lebanon 143
Anne-Marie Maïla-Afeiche
Interstitial Identities: Reimagining the Asian Civilisations Museum 151
Kennie Ting
Curating across Cultures: Globalising Dynamics in Contemporary Museal
Practice 161
Henry Kim
Conclusion: Navigating Universality in the Museums of the Twenty-First Century 167
François-René Martin
Abstracts (Arabic) 173
Abstracts (French) 181
About the Authors 193
About the Authors (Arabic) 204
About the Authors (French) 213
Gallery with Colour Plates 225
New Identities of Museums
in a Globalised World
In November 2018, just twelve months after its opening to the public, Louvre Abu
Dhabi hosted Worlds in a Museum in collaboration with the École du Louvre. A two-
day event, the symposium brought together an international assemblage of museum
leaders, curators and academics to discuss the potential purposes and new identities of
museums in an increasingly globalised and interconnected world.
The symposium was also a way of marking Louvre Abu Dhabi’s first anniversary,
not with fanfare and celebrations, but with serious questions, spirited discussion and
informed debate. At stake was the question of how museums might become more wel-
coming places of encounter and discovery in the 21st century, accessible to audiences of
all backgrounds and ages, while delivering a more inclusive, diverse and comprehensive
understanding of the past.
These were the very same issues that had informed the decade-long process of re-
alising Louvre Abu Dhabi, a journey that began with the signing, in March 2007, of
an unprecedented agreement between the governments of Abu Dhabi and France. The
aim then was not just to establish the first universal museum in the Arab world, but to
use the knowledge and expertise of 16 of France’s most illustrious national museums to
help create a fundamentally different type of institution, one whose unique curatorial
perspective is informed by changing values and the museum’s location at one of the great
crossroads of humanity.
The result is a particularly polyphonic museum that looks toward a future in which
long-established hierarchies have been replaced by newer, more inclusive ways of seeing
while simultaneously drawing on a deeply rooted intellectual inheritance that extends
back to the establishment of the great Enlightenment institutions of the 18th and 19th
centuries.
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