Protests Heat Up Against The Guggenheim’s New Museum In Abu Dhabi

Protests Heat Up Against The Guggenheim’s New Museum In Abu Dhabi

Growing outrage against the Guggenheim’s new museum in the United Arab Emirates kicked into high gear this week: Protesters stormed the Guggenheim’s New York location for a second time, and a fake website launched claiming to solicit new, “ethical” ideas for the museum’s design.

The website, which is at globalguggenheim.org, announces that the Frank Gehry-designed concept for the museum has been scrapped in favour of a competition in partnership with the United Arab Emirates tourism bureau, which asks designers to reimagine the role of the museum as a place for “sustainability, equity, and accountability.” A few renderings have been submitted.

The protest is also playing out at the museum itself. On Saturday night, dozens of people gathered at the museum to shower the atrium with red and white pieces of paper designed to look like dollars, printed with messages like “What Does An Ethical Global Museum Look Like?” and “Shit Is Fucked Up & Bullshit.”

Protests Heat Up Against The Guggenheim’s New Museum In Abu Dhabi

The fake homepage at globalguggenheim.org

The group behind both initiatives is the Global Ultra Luxury Faction (GULF), part of an organisation named Gulf Labour, which first submitted a petition against the Guggenheim Foundation in 2011. Gulf Labour has been actively protesting the construction of several projects on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi until migrant worker rights are protected. For this latest burst of activity, Gulf Labour has also been collaborating with Occupy Wall Street, with the “OWS Illuminator” projecting messages on the Guggenheim’s facade in an earlier protest.

Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel, Norman Foster, Tadao Ando, and Zaha Hadid.”

Protests Heat Up Against The Guggenheim’s New Museum In Abu Dhabi

The real rendering for the Guggenheim’s Gehry-designed museum on Saadiyat Island

The human rights violations on the island’s construction projects have been well-documented over the last few years. A 2009 Human Rights Watch report noted that laborers were being forced to pay for their contracts, live in substandard housing, and had their passports taken away so they could not leave the worksite. Last year, 40 laborers were hospitalized after a bloody confrontation between employers and striking workers.

These luxury megadevelopments throughout the Middle East are attracting thousands of workers from nearby countries who come seeking jobs but end up becoming victims of the kafala system, in which migrant workers are bound to their employers. (It has been compared to slavery.) Construction safety and poor working conditions have been a huge issue throughout the area, with over 500 migrant workers killed in nearby Qatar working on structures for the World Cup .

As an op-ed by NYU professor Andrew Ross pointed out in this weekend’s New York Times, the Guggenheim and Gehry have a chance to separate themselves from the other projects on Saadiyat Island. But, so far, the only response from the Guggenheim is a short statement that the competition website is a hoax.


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