Dear friend of Sanlian zhongdu/三联中读的朋友们：

my name is Manuel Rabate，I’m the director of Louvre Abu Dhabi Museum. The new museum which opened recently in Abu Dhabi. We opened in November 27th last year. My job is to be the director of museum which means overseeing all the responsibilities in the museum, from the curatorial, collection management part up to and of course logistics, registers, visitors, service, marketing, programs, education, and of course the building,

我是Manuel Rabate，阿布扎比卢浮宫博物馆的馆长。这是一座新的博物馆，坐落于阿布扎比。我们于去年的11月27日开馆，担任博物馆的馆长，意味着要负责监督博物馆中所有的事务，例如策展、藏品管理乃至物流、注册、参观者、服务、市场、项目、教育，当然还包括建筑。

Now, let me explain a little bit what the Louvre Abu Dhabi is to the Chinese public.

现在，让我向中国公众简单介绍一下阿布扎比卢浮宫博物馆。

▲卢浮宫阿布扎比博物馆

Louvre Abu Dhabi was born as a project 10 years ago.It’s a meeting point between the UE(The United Arab Emirates)and France，a little country in Europe. They met together to imagine what is now the first universal museum in the Arab world. What do we mean by universal museum? We mean the museum which is rooted in the tradition of these encyclopedic museums. These museums which of artworks form all civilizations from all periods of time, which are, we say, trying to encompass the world in the galleries.

卢浮宫阿布扎比博物馆的历史要追溯到10年前，是由UE（阿拉伯联合酋长国）和法国（欧洲的一个小国家）有开启国家博物馆间文化合作的意向。双方曾想什么样的博物馆才称得上首家阿拉伯国家综合博物馆？我们所指的全球化综合博物馆意味着什么？我们指的是，植根于这些百科全书式博物馆传统中的博物馆。这些博物馆中有来自全球各个时期各种文明的艺术品，可以说，这所博物馆试图在展厅中囊括整个世界。

So this is what the name Louvre in a way means, a museum generous open to the world，and inviting further visitors. Abu Dhabi means hope. Abu Dhabi has always been connected.

这也是卢浮宫的名字所指——一座向世界开放的博物馆，它欢迎来自各地的游客。阿布扎比意味着希望。阿布扎比一直与世界紧密相连。

It was connected to the full of surroundings in the very old times, and today it is one of the transportation hub through the airport. so when we put together the Louvre with two and half century old and Abu Dhabi, we are telling a new story, the story of the history of art connected.

在很久以前，它与周围的环境紧密相连，而如今，它则是一个机场的交通枢纽。所以当我们把有两个半世纪历史的卢浮宫和阿布扎比放在一起，这就呈现出一个新的故事，而这个故事和艺术史紧密相连。

The architecture is absolutely incredible. The French architect called Jean Nouvel has been always working with the Arab word essence. One of his most famous building is l’institut du monde arabe in Paris. Jean Nouvel invented for the Louvre Abu Dhabi Museum which is surrounded on all sides, on the full sides by water.

▲法国巴黎，阿拉伯世界中心

博物馆的建筑令人难忘。法国建筑师让·努维尔一直运用着阿拉伯元素。他最著名的建筑之一是巴黎的阿拉伯世界研究中心。让·努维尔设计的阿布扎比卢浮宫博物馆四面环水。

It’s a museum which is on Saadiyat island，an island which is been developed by the Abu Dhabi government as a cultural district which has several museums, so these museum is connected. This museum is an invitation to explore, a sort of Medina, which is the Arab word for city. The Medina, so each little house in the city is actually one of the room of the museum. on the top of that,(sorry, I’m doing it with my hands,but you have to imagine) a gigantic copolar, a dome，floating 36 meters high, which is filtering through 8 layers of metal, which is filtering the rays of the sun, which we call ‘the rain of light’. so we see a very very impressive building, in which has strong sensory experience when you arrive.

这是一座在萨迪亚特岛上的博物馆，这座由阿布扎比政府开发的小岛，现在是一个文化区，岛上有好几座博物馆，这些博物馆紧密联系。这座博物馆将会吸引你更加深入探索麦地那，这是一个阿拉伯城市。麦地那城市中的每一座小房子其实都是一个博物馆的空间。卢浮宫阿布扎比博物馆的顶上，（抱歉，我只能用我的手比划，你们需要发挥一下想象力）是一个巨大的穹顶，漂浮在36米高的空中。通过8个金属叠加层，阳光透过它照射下来，形成了我们说的“光雨”。所以，这是一个令人印象非常深刻的建筑，当你来到这里，你会获得震撼的感观体验。

▲卢浮宫阿布扎比博物馆内，“光雨”

Then in the galleries, which have been developed also by Jean Nouvel in coordination with our scientific team. We offer art works from all civilizations in the same showcases, in the same rooms. So when the Louvre Abu Dhabi is proposing to the visitors, is walking through times, you start with the very beginning of history, prehistorical time, and you go room by room, up to the contemporary times, so it’s very pleasant but also educative, and even more, because you have layers and layer’s complexity. You can discover artworks from many civilizations, been together in equal, sometimes they share something because there were exchanges on trade, sometimes is just fundamental on topological communalities, that make us the same.

展厅也是建筑师让·努维尔和我们技术团队的合作设计的。我们将来自全球各大文明的艺术品在同一个展览、同一个空间中展示。当阿布扎比卢浮宫博物馆向参观者开放，人们就如同穿越时光，从不同的展览间穿过，如同从最古老的历史，即史前时期走来，一直走到当代，这是非常令人愉快的，当然也更具教育意义，因为展示了一层层的复杂性。你会发现，不同文明孕育的艺术作品是彼此融汇相通的。有时，由于受到贸易交流的影响，它们之间显现出一些共性；有时，则是地质共性的基本原则，使我们如此相似。

So fundamentally, we say a positive museum in which you see the highest expression of creation of mankind, in what we human share.

所以可以从根本上说，这座博物馆正产生着积极的影响，在这里你可以看到我们人类共同创造的最高境界，与人类共享。

▲卢浮宫阿布扎比博物馆展厅

We have so many masterpieces coming from the French collection, coming from Louvre Abu Dhabi collection, some of them coming from loans, by our partners. but I will try to choose three, then I will invite you, all of friends of sanlian zhongdu, I will invite you to come to Louvre Abu Dhabi to visit the museum. You know that it’s no visa requirement in the UAE，you should come and visit.

我们有很多非常重要的作品来自于法国藏品，也有来自阿布扎比卢浮宫的藏品，还有一些是从合作伙伴借来的。我会选出三件来进行介绍。当然，我诚挚邀请所有三联中读的朋友们，前往阿布扎比卢浮宫博物馆参观。现在来阿联酋也不需要签证，你们应该来参观。

When you think of public, you want to let public come, so what is the real hindrance? Is it price of the ticket, is it the capacities of information, so you need to work on all of this. But in our case, we have, in Louvre Abu Dhabi, a lot of masterpieces from many origins.

当考虑到公众层面，你希望公众到来，所以我们思考：是什么会产生真正的阻碍？是门票价格，是信息容量，你需要对这些工作优化进行处理。在卢浮宫阿布扎比博物馆，我们拥有从各个地方来的很多大师级作品。

三件镇馆之宝

镇馆之宝01：《拉美西斯二世雕像》Ramesses II  

▲《拉美西斯二世雕像》Ramesses II  

First one I will choose it, because of very , I say, funny moment in a way, is an incredible loan from the museum of Louvre in Paris. which has lent us this impressive very high a few meters statue of Ramesses II  the statue itself weigh 4.5tons, so it’s really very big and impressive. So the statue in itself is beautiful, but the strength of it is something like an aura.

首先，我选择这个，因为非常有趣，这是巴黎卢浮宫出借的一件令人难以置信的展品，令人印象深刻，它非常高，有好几米，是拉美西斯二世的雕像，重4.5吨，非常非常大，令人震撼。这座雕塑非常精美，但是它的力量如同光环。

When we were installing it in the museum, the museum has already been built, I remember the engineer calculating to make sure, in all it took us like two days just to have the artwork coming into the final position. So this is supposedly on loan for one year but certainly more, because is also very delicate to take it out . it’s one of the peak of the visit.

当我们想把这件文物放到博物馆当中时，博物馆已经建成了。我记得工程师当时还计算过，确保这件作品在两天内成功归位。这件作品只出借一年，但是应该更长时间，因为很难把它取出来。这是大家争相参观的珍品之一。

▲《拉美西斯二世雕像》Ramesses II  

镇馆之宝02：《玛烈莎狮兽像》Mari-cha lion

▲  《玛烈莎狮兽像》Mari-cha lion

My second artwork would be something which has been acquired by the Louvre Abu Dhabi collection, which is so property of Abu Dhabi government, very important. We call it the Mari-cha lion，it’s our Islamic Art treasure.

第二件作品是来自于阿布扎比卢浮宫的藏品，也是阿布扎比政府的财产，非常重要，我们叫它玛烈莎狮兽。这是我们的伊斯兰艺术珍品。

We don’t know if it is Spain or Italy, but certainly of the 12th century, it’s a wonderful  lion which is engraved with writing, with drawings, very very beautiful and rare piece. Impressive also. And something which can interest your audience is that we that discovered that inside the lion, you have a mechanism which was used to make a sound, Roar....., as if the lion was roaring. And in the way, we think we have the first automatic, the first robot. So I wish we could have this exhibition from this lion to the robot. Because this is a very important step in the mechanization of objects.

不知道它是起源于西班牙还是意大利，但确定来自12世纪，这是一尊精美的狮兽，上面刻着文字、绘画，非常漂亮，是一件稀有的作品。当然也令人印象深刻。还有一点很吸引观者眼球，我们在狮子内部装置了一个机关，可以用来发出声音，呜呜呜，像是狮子在咆哮。顺便说一下，我们认为这是有史以来第一个自动装置——第一个机器人。我期待能举办一场特展，将这头狮子的发展历程以及现代的机器人进行展示，因为这对物体的机械化来说是非常重要的一步。

镇馆之宝03：《年轻的埃米尔在阅读》A Young Emir Studying

▲ 奥斯曼·哈姆迪·贝伊，《年轻的埃米尔在阅读》A Young Emir Studying

Finally, if I have to close, I think one of my painting，painting which I have a strong relationship, is a paint which is also in the collection, a painting by Osman Hamdi Bey, a Turkish painter, who was trained in Paris, and came back to Istanbul, who was very important for the artistic life in Istanbul. His painting is inscribes reading, in orientalist style. But himself is Turkish, it is really the transfer of skills and experience and exchange, is a beautiful painting and it becoming one of the face of Louvre Abu Dhabi. That will be my three, I have many more. So any way to discover all of them is to come to Abu Dhabi to visit.

最后的压轴之作是一件与我们密切相关的绘画作品，由奥斯曼·哈姆迪·贝伊创作，他是一位土耳其艺术家，曾在巴黎接受培训，最后回到伊斯坦布尔，他对伊斯坦布尔的艺术生活来说非常重要。他的绘画作品是东方风格的，而他自己是土耳其人，是一种技巧和经验的转换，非常漂亮，也成为了阿布扎伯卢浮宫的代表性作品。这就是我选出的三件藏品，我们这里还有很多。如果想要了解这些藏品，唯一的途径是来阿布扎比亲自参观。

发生在博物馆里最难忘的事情

Now you want me to share one of my sweet memories. I will share two important moments in the life of the project. Again, you have to come to understand what I’m talking about. The first moment was really in the construction phase before the museum was finished. For a long time, the surroundings of the museum was filled with sand and lots of the concrete to block, to be able work on the building. But at one point, the team took out, and let the water came. So we saw the first time that museum was really completely surrounded by water. And for the first time, we are instead of the metal of the dome, we had the colors, we had the blue of the sea, we had the red of the sunset, and that was for me as if you light an artwork from different angles and you rediscover something you had seen. Really a moment I was touched because you didn’t think about it and you just observe some beautiful. That was my first moment.

要是谈及甜蜜的回忆的话，我会分享在此次项目中两个重要的时刻。当然，你们得到现场才会真正理解我说的是什么。第一个时刻是在一开始，博物馆竣工之前，当时博物馆还在建设中，遍地都是施工的沙子和混凝土。后来某个时间，团队把这些都清理了，水流了进来，我们第一次真正看到博物馆四周被水包围的景象。我们第一次忽略了金属穹顶，我们有了色彩，我们有蓝色的海，红色的夕阳，对于我来说，就像从不同的角度照亮艺术品，你会重新发现自己看到过的东西。这一刻，非常感人。这时候什么都不用想，你只是去感受这种美丽。这就是我的第一个难忘的时刻。

My second moment is the day of opening to the public. We were preparing ourselves so much to see the public. we wanted to greet the first visitor, and so we had a little present for the first visitor. We prepare a book about the museum I wanted to give it to the first visitor. Actually the first visitor was a little girl so cute, so happy, and so when I was giving the present to her, and I didn’t realize or envisage that the first visitor would be a child and it was very touching because we see it’s really our mission as a museum to work for the future generations. The reason the museum exists.

第二个难忘的时刻，是博物馆开放的第一天。我们准备好了去迎接公众，我们想要欢迎第一位参观者，所以准备了一个小礼物给第一位参观者。那是一个关于博物馆的小册子，用来赠与第一位参观者。而事实上，第一位参观者是一个小女孩，非常可爱，非常开心。当我把这个礼物给她前，我从没想到会是个孩子。这使我很受触动，因为我们明白了博物馆也是为了未来的一代而存在。这是博物馆存在的原因。

▲ 阿布扎比卢浮宫博物馆展厅内部

A museum by definition is a place in which you keep, you save ,you protect your restore artworks. That also a place in which you understand, you study these artworks and present them to the public. So this is a real DNA of any real museum.

一座博物馆从定义上来说，是一个可以存放、保存、修复艺术藏品的地方。同时，也是一个你了解、研究艺术品并展示给公众的地方。这是任何一座博物馆真正的DNA。

In our case, I think this museum is also a part of a very strong, long term education an development investment by a strong state which is very voluntarily deciding to move these people together to the next phase. This is part of a very strong and very clever development. I think our museum is a part of articulated strategy of development.

在我看来，这座博物馆是长期教育的一部分，它是由一个强大的国家投资兴建的，这个国家致力于使民众有所进步。这是发展中非常强大且明智一部分，而我们的博物馆是发展中的一个清晰环节。