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Louvre Abu Dhabi, Richard Mille Create New Exhibition and Art Prize

Louvre Abu Dhabi. Department of Culture and Tourism
Louvre Abu Dhabi. Department of Culture and Tourism
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Louvre Abu Dhabi, Richard Mille Create New Exhibition and Art Prize

Louvre Abu Dhabi. Department of Culture and Tourism
Louvre Abu Dhabi. Department of Culture and Tourism

Louvre Abu Dhabi and Swiss watchmaking brand Richard Mille have jointly announced the launch of a new annual exhibition – to be called Louvre Abu Dhabi Art Here - and the creation of The Richard Mille Art Prize, with the aim of promoting the best of contemporary art.

For its inaugural year, the exhibition and prize will shine a spotlight on Emirati and UAE-based artists as part of the UAE’s wider 50-year Jubilee celebrations.

Louvre Abu Dhabi Art Here will be an exciting new international exhibition which will serve as an annual platform to showcase contemporary artists working in a variety of media. Each year the exhibition will see four to six artists selected through an open call for proposals, with each exhibiting their artwork in the Forum, a space of interaction and exchange within Louvre Abu Dhabi dedicated to contemporary art. Louvre Abu Dhabi Art Here 2021 will take place in November, 2021.

Following their submissions, one of the chosen artists will be awarded The Richard Mille Art Prize, with the announcement of the winner to take place in a ceremony organized at Louvre Abu Dhabi. The annual cash reward of $50,000 will be part of a ten-year commitment between the museum and Richard Mille.

"The announcement of the creation of The Richard Mille Art Prize and the Louvre Abu Dhabi Art Here exhibition is the latest reminder that Abu Dhabi is accelerating its support and promotion of local creative talent, while simultaneously cementing its position as an attractive and inspiring destination for global creatives," said Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, Chairman of the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi).

"We already know that world-class artists live among us. This new prize and accompanying exhibition will serve to spotlight the best of current UAE artistic talent in a year where our nation is both celebrating 50 years of achievement and looking forward to the next 50."

Today’s open call for proposals invites submissions from Emirati and UAE-based artists around the theme of ‘Memory, Time and Territory’. This theme has particular resonance in the context of the UAE's Jubilee celebrations, allowing artists to reflect on the country's legacy as a territory where questions of past, present and future combine and overlap. Proposals may be submitted until 31st August. The shortlist of candidates will be selected by a jury of international art experts, to be announced at a later date.

Peter Harrison, CEO of Richard Mille EMEA, said, "In a few short years, Louvre Abu Dhabi has become one of the most iconic art museums in the world. Richard Mille and Louvre Abu Dhabi are both built upon the tenets of excellence in innovation, artistry, mastery and savoir-faire. As an avid art collector, I have long been inspired by the visionary perspectives brought to light by contemporary artists. Therefore, I’m especially proud to see this collaboration between Louvre Abu Dhabi and Richard Mille come to life, dedicated to nurturing the next generation of artistic talent. The Richard Mille Art Prize will redefine the benchmarks of contemporary creativity, with a goal to offer exceptional artists the opportunity to create a new dimension of their potential."

"Our partnership with Richard Mille represents a mutual, long-term commitment to supporting contemporary artistic talent within the UAE and this region, while connecting Louvre Abu Dhabi to its territory," said Manuel Rabaté, Director of Louvre Abu Dhabi. "We aim to provide these artists with a highly visible platform from which to come together and showcase their work to both our community and the global audience. This initiative also represents a decisive step forward by Louvre Abu Dhabi into the arena of contemporary art, as we further expand on our mission to shine a light on the cultural connections which unite us all."

The announcement of the winner of the inaugural Louvre Abu Dhabi Art Here 2021 and The Richard Mille Art Prize will run parallel to the UAE’s cultural season, which is made up of Expo 2020 Dubai, Abu Dhabi Art, Dubai Design Week and Art Dubai; an exciting addition to a growing local calendar celebrating modern-day creativity. Louvre Abu Dhabi Art Here 2021 exhibition will run from November 2021 to March 2022.

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Varieties

Jimmy Carter's Woodworking, Painting and Poetry Reveal an Introspective Renaissance Man

(FILES) Former President Jimmy Carter waves to the crowd at the Democratic National Convention 2008 at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado, on August 25, 2008. (Photo by Robyn BECK / AFP)
(FILES) Former President Jimmy Carter waves to the crowd at the Democratic National Convention 2008 at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado, on August 25, 2008. (Photo by Robyn BECK / AFP)
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Jimmy Carter's Woodworking, Painting and Poetry Reveal an Introspective Renaissance Man

(FILES) Former President Jimmy Carter waves to the crowd at the Democratic National Convention 2008 at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado, on August 25, 2008. (Photo by Robyn BECK / AFP)
(FILES) Former President Jimmy Carter waves to the crowd at the Democratic National Convention 2008 at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado, on August 25, 2008. (Photo by Robyn BECK / AFP)

The world knew Jimmy Carter as a president and humanitarian, but he also was a woodworker, painter and poet, creating a body of artistic work that reflects deeply personal views of the global community — and himself.
His portfolio illuminates his closest relationships, his spartan sensibilities and his place in the evolution of American race relations. And it continues to improve the finances of The Carter Center, his enduring legacy, The Associated Press said.
Creating art provided “the rare opportunity for privacy” in his otherwise public life, Carter said. “These times of solitude are like being in another very pleasant world.”
‘One of the best gifts of my life' Mourners at Carter’s hometown funeral will see the altar cross he carved in maple and collection plates he turned on his lathe. Great-grandchildren in the front pews at Maranatha Baptist Church slept as infants in cradles he fashioned.
The former president measured himself a “fairly proficient” craftsman. Chris Bagby, an Atlanta woodworker whose shop Carter frequented, elevated that assessment to “rather accomplished.”
Carter gleaned the basics on his father’s farm, where the Great Depression meant being a jack-of-all-trades. He learned more in shop class and with Future Farmers of America. “I made a miniature of the White House,” he recalled, insisting it was not about his ambitions.
During his Navy years, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter chose unfurnished military housing to stretch his $300 monthly wage, and he built their furniture himself in a shop on base.
As president, Carter nurtured woodworking rather than his golf game, spending hours in a wood shop at Camp David to make small presents for family and friends. And when he left the White House, West Wing aides and Cabinet members pooled money for a shopping spree at Sears, Roebuck & Co. so he could finally assemble a full-scale home woodshop.
“One of the best gifts of my life,” Carter said.
Working in their converted garage, he previewed decades of Habitat for Humanity work by refurbishing their one-story house in Plains. He also improved his fine woodworking skills, joining wood without nails or screws. He also bought Japanese carving tools, and fashioned a chess set later owned by a Saudi prince.
Not just any customer Carter frequented Atlanta’s Highland Woodworking, a shop replete with a library of how-to books and hard-to-find tools, and recruited the world’s preeminent handmade furniture maker, Tage Frid, as an instructor, Bagby said.
Still hanging near the store entrance is a picture of Frid, who died in 2004, teaching students including a smiling former president at the front of the class.
“He was like a regular customer,” Bagby said, other than the “Secret Service agents who came with him.”
Carter built four ladder-back chairs out of hickory in 1983, and Sotheby’s auctioned them for $21,000 each at the time, the first of many sales of Carter paintings and furniture that raised millions to benefit The Carter Center.
It was rarely about the money, though. Jill Stuckey, a longtime friend who would have the Carters over to her home in Plains, recalled seeing the former president carrying out one of her chairs.
“I said, ‘What are you doing?’” she recalled. “He said, ‘It’s broken. I’m going to take it home and fix it.’”
He was at her back door at 7:30 the next morning, holding her repaired chair.
Carter compared woodworking to the results of his labor as a Navy engineer, or as a boy on the farm: “I like to see what I have done, what I have made.”
‘No special talent,' but his paintings drive auctions Carter employed a folk-art style as a late-in-life amateur painter and claimed “no special talent,” but a 2020 Carter Center auction drew $340,000 for his painting titled “Cardinals," and his oil-on-canvas of an eagle sold for $225,000 in 2023, months after he entered hospice care.
Carter’s work hangs throughout the center’s campus. A room where he met with dignitaries is encircled with birds he painted after he and Rosalynn took on bird watching as a hobby.
Near the executive offices are a self-portrait and a painting of Rosalynn in their early post-presidential years, hanging across from a trio of Andy Warhol prints showing Carter in office.
Carter’s earliest years predominate, with boyhood farm scenes and portraits of influential figures like his father James Earl Carter Sr., whose death in 1953 led him to abandon a Navy career and eventually enter politics in Georgia.
Some of his subjects, including both of his parents, are looking away. Carter's likeness of his mother shows “Miss Lillian” as a 70-year-old Peace Corps volunteer in India. Jason Carter said the piece was particularly meaningful to his grandfather, who lost reelection at a relatively youthful 56.
“When he got out of the White House, she was standing there saying, ’Well, I turned 70 in the Peace Corps. What are you going to do?” Jason Carter said.
One Carter subject who meets his gaze is a young Rosalynn — they married when she was 18 and he was 21. He described her as “remarkably beautiful, almost painfully shy, obviously intelligent, and yet unrestrained in our discussions.”
Another who doesn’t look away is Rachel Clark, a Black sharecropper who had hosted the future president after they worked in the fields. “Except for my parents, Rachel Clark was the person closest to me,” Carter wrote of his childhood.
'Just a word of praise' Carter wrote more than 30 books — even a novel — but was most introspective in poetry.
On his first real recognition of Jim Crow segregation: “A silent line was drawn between friend and friend, race and race.”
On his Cold War submarine’s delicate dance with enemies: “We wanted them to understand ... to share our love of solitude ... the peace we yearned to keep.”
Rosalynn’s smile, he gushed, silenced the birds, “or may be I failed to hear their song.”
Perhaps Carter’s most revealing poem, “I Wanted to Share My Father’s World,” concerns the man who never got to see his namesake son’s achievements. He wrote that he despised Earl’s discipline, and swallowed hunger for “just a word of praise.”
Only when he brought his own sons to visit his dying father did he “put aside the past resentments of the boy” and see “the father who will never cease to be alive in me.”