Louvre Abu Dhabi commissions Jenny Holzer and Giuseppe Penone for inaugural contemporary installations

The Louvre Abu Dhabi has commissioned artists Jenny Holzer and Giuseppe Penone to create permanent installations for its collection, responding to the Jean Nouvel-designed architecture. Penone's four-part work Germination explores connections between humanity, art, and nature. Holzer presents three engraved marble panels featuring texts from a Mesopotamian cuneiform tablet, Michel de Montaigne, and Ibn Khaldun's 14th-century Muqaddimah, to be mounted on external gallery walls. The museum, established through a 30-year agreement between Abu Dhabi and the French government, is scheduled to open in 2017 on Saadiyat Island. These commissions mark the institution's first contemporary art acquisitions.