I wasn’t invited to the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s opening ceremonies today (no surprise), but I did get an emailed invitation to watch them livestreamed on the museum’s Facebook page.
Below is my tweeted account of that broadcast, which was abruptly interrupted without explanation, depriving us of what I assume were to have been speeches by the Louvre’s director, Jean-Luc Martinez, and the dazzling museum’s architect, Jean Nouvel.
Was there a technical glitch (museum’s website also seems very balky), or did something untoward occur? So far, I’ve seen no explanation. Please contact me, art-lings, if you were there and know what happened. I’ll update.
For now, here’s what I managed to report. The photos are my screenshots from the webcast. I understood most of the French and was wowed by French President Emmanuel Macron‘s heartfelt, eloquent speech about the power of beauty to overcome obscurantism (a word he used repeatedly). To learn about what was said in Arabic, go here.