When asked what is needed from a museum director, Manuel Rabaté pauses before saying a director is like an architect, putting different parts together. 'I’m not an art historian,' he says. 'My role is to build the machine that allows this encounter – between artworks, ideas and people.'
As his tenure as director of Louvre Abu Dhabi comes to a close, Rabaté spoke to TN Magazine and reflected on his life-changing experience with the institution and the city.
Read @aloraibi_mina and @whmullally 's profile of Rabaté in the March issue of TN Magazine, available at the link in bio and in today's edition of The National.
Photographer: Victor Besa
Shot at Louvre Abu Dhabi
The National Editor-in-Chief: @aloraibi_mina
Editor, TN Magazine: @nasri.atallah
Deputy editor, TN Magazine: @sarah_maisey_
Art director: Gerald Du
Creative director: Nick Donaldson
Picture editors: Olive Obina, Scott Chasserot
Sub-editors: Aarti Jhurani, Panna Munyal
Manuel Rabaté is not ready to say goodbye just yet. For close to a decade, he has overseen Louvre Abu Dhabi from its earliest days to its emergence as one of the region’s defining cultural institutions. Now he is preparing for a new chapter, carrying forward a philosophy shaped by his years in the UAE.
As he steps down to become director and chief executive of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in New Delhi, Rabaté looks back on a period that has shaped both his professional life and the cultural landscape of Abu Dhabi.
On a personal level, Abu Dhabi has become Rabaté’s home, the city where two of his daughters were born and a multitude of friendships formed. He learnt Arabic – an ongoing project – and embraced Emirati and Arab culture.
‘I touched the soul of this country,’ he says. ‘I came here as a professional working on a museum project. But when you live here, when your children grow up here, when you experience the diversity of people who call this place home, it changes you.’
Read @aloraibi_mina and @whmullally ’s profile of Rabaté in the March issue of TN Magazine, available at the link in bio and in today’s edition of The National.
Photographer: Victor Besa
Shot at Louvre Abu Dhabi
The National Editor-in-Chief: @aloraibi_mina
Editor, TN Magazine: @nasri.atallah
Deputy editor, TN Magazine: @sarah_maisey_
Art director: Gerald Du
Creative director: Nick Donaldson
Picture editors: Olive Obina, Scott Chasserot
Sub-editors: Aarti Jhurani, Panna Munyal
The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (@knmaindia ) has appointed Manuel Rabaté (@rbtmanuel ) as its Chief Executive Officer and Director. Formerly Director of Louvre Abu Dhabi, Manuel Rabaté brings over 25 years of global museum leadership and joins at a pivotal moment as KNMA prepares for its landmark new building in New Delhi, guiding the institution’s next phase of growth and international engagement.
#KNMA #KiranNadarMuseumOfArt #IndianMuseums
A new exhibition, titled Picasso, the Figure, opens at Louvre Abu Dhabi today, offering a focused yet wide-ranging examination of the artist famed for reshaping how the human body could be seen, imagined and fractured in modern art. At Louvre Abu Dhabi, Guernica also becomes a point of connection with the Arab world. One section of the exhibition explores its lasting impact across the region, placing it in dialogue with Elegy to My Trapped City by Iraqi artist Dia Al Azzawi. Created as part of his Land of Darkness series following the Gulf War, Al Azzawi’s work adopts a similarly monumental scale and black-and-white palette, alongside dismembered bodies and animal imagery. Yet, it transforms Picasso’s visual language into a lament for Baghdad, where anguish prompted by destruction becomes both deeply personal and collectively shared.
This dialogue is reinforced by the inclusion of photographs taken by Dora Maar during the making of Guernica in Picasso’s Paris studio in 1937. Commissioned for the journal Cahiers d’art, the photographs document the painting’s evolution and reveal the physical constraints under which it was produced, including the need to tilt the vast canvas within a confined attic space. This gallery space is also accented with audio of poetry reading. The poem, read in Arabic, also titled Elegy to My Trapped City, is by Iraqi poet Abdul Wahab Al Bayati. @diaazzawi@louvreabudhabi@museepicassoparis@meemgallery@abudhabiculture #diaazzawi #louvreabudhabi @rbtmanuel #picasso #modernart #arabart
Beauty is a universal language — one that allows us to recognize ourselves, even in otherness.
In Sacred Realities: Curating the Invisible, Manuel Rabaté, Director of Louvre Abu Dhabi, reflected on multiplicity in perception, how beauty becomes a shared ground for diverse readings and encounters across cultures.
The panel, featuring Désiré Feuerle, Manuel Rabaté, and Tricia Tuttle in conversation with Daniele Maruca, is now streaming in full at youtube.com/ISTANBUL74OFFICIAL
@rbtmanuel@thefeuerlecollection@danielemaruca@istfest@istanbul74_
#ISTFESTIVAL2025 #GoTürkiye #GoIstanbul
Pleasure to wander the streets of Istanbul and to see some shops participating to "NEARNESS -A Neighbourhood Exhibition"
Part of IST Festival 2025
Ali Elmaci
Hepimiz Vampiriz Birimiz Hariç VIII, 2024
