Art Tourism, Guggenheim Effect and Abu Dhabi

The new Guggenheim Abu Dhabi will be located in the Cultural District of Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Designed by

internationally renowned architect Frank Gehry, the 450,000-square-foot museum will house its own major modern and contemporary art collection and present special

exhibitions that will include works from the Guggenheim Foundation's extensive collection. The museum, the largest Guggenheim in the world, will have global art,

exhibitions, and education programs with particular focus on Middle Eastern contemporary art. The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi joins other leading international cultural

institutions in the unprecedented creation of a vibrant cultural destination for visitors from around the world. Courtesy of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi website. 

http://www.guggenheim.org/abu-dhabi/

DAY 16 Today is Wednesday, January 18th, and we turn to the relatively new (but actually tried and true) form of tourism called art tourism. In the seventeenth, eighteenth

and nineteenth centuries and later, European gentlemen would travel abroad on 'grand tour' learning first hand about the art, politics and culture of foreign lands. This

form of proto art tourism was available to only the privileged few. The same, it appears, will be the case for the cultural district being created in Abu Dhabi. Discuss the

so-called Guggenheim effect and its consequences for the art market. Use the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi project as an example or choose another example of

contemporary art tourism and its relationship to the art market.

Readings

"The Guggenheim Effect"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2002/oct/30/urbandesign.architecture2

Lorenzo Vicario and P. Manuel Martinez Monje, Another 'Guggenheim Effect'? The Generation of
a Potentially Gentri?able Neighbourhood in Bilbao" in Urban Studies, Vol. 40, No. 12, 2383--2400, November 2003

http://www.scholars-on-bilbao.info/fichas/7VicarioetaltUS2003.pdf

Individual Contributions