Otto Piene’s “Hängende Lichtkugel (Hanging Light Ball)” will be in the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi show.Credit2014 Otto Piene Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi

The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, one of three museums being built on the windswept Saadiyat Island in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, has been a quieter presence than the two other institutions there. The Louvre Abu Dhabi, designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel, which is scheduled to open next year, and the Zayed National Museum, created by the British architect Norman Foster and to be completed in two years, have each had exhibitions at Manarat Al Saadiyat, the island’s exhibition and visitor center, offering previews of their institutions. Now it is the Guggenheim’s turn.

Only the pilings are in place for the 450,000-square-foot Guggenheim, designed by Frank Gehry and slated to open in 2017. (Like the other museums, it is being financed by the development arm of the Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority.) But for the last five years, curators have been putting together a collection, buying an international representation of art from 1960 on. Of some 250 works acquired, 16 will be on view in “Seeing Through Light: Selections From the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Collection,” at Manarat from Nov. 5 through Jan. 19. The show will also include two loans from the permanent collection of the Guggenheim in New York.

A Hoare portrait of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo is finally in Virginia.CreditJamestown-Yorktown Foundation

“It is small in nature because the space, a temporary exhibition gallery used to foster audience engagement for the three museums, is only about 15,000 square feet,” said Susan Davidson, a senior curator of collections and exhibitions at the Guggenheim in New York. Calling the show “a tasting,” Ms. Davidson, with Maisa al-Qassimi, the museums program manager for the Tourism & Culture Authority, said they chose light as the theme because “it is very much a subject that works across times and cultures.”

The show will be organized thematically, addressing various kinds of light: activated, celestial, perceptual, reflected and transcendent. Some works will be experiential, including the largest of Yayoi Kusama’s “infinity rooms,” a darkened endless galaxy of water and mirrors illuminated with tiny, handblown LED lights; and an installation by the German artist Otto Piene. There will also be works by Shirazeh Houshiary, El Anatsui, James Rosenquist and Y. Z. Kami. Douglas Wheeler and Robert Irwin, Los Angeles artists who have long dealt with the subject of light, will also be included....Continue Reading

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