Cultural Heritage, Transnational Narratives and Museum Franchising in Abu Dhabi

Sarina Wakefield

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781351614863
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

This publication contributes to new understandings of how heritage operates as a global phenomenon and the transnational heritage discourses that emerge from this process. Taking such a view sees autochthonous and franchised heritage not as separate or opposing elements but as part of the same process of contemporary globalised identity-making, which contributes to the development of newly emergent cosmopolitan identities. The book critically examines the processes that are involved in the franchising of heritage and its cultural effects. It does so by examining the connections and tensions that emerge from combining autochthonous and franchised heritage in the United Arab Emirates, providing a unique window in to the process of creating hybrid heritage in non-Western contexts. It develops new ideas about how this global phenomenon works, how it might be characterised and how it influences and is itself affected by local forms of heritage. By exploring how autochthonous and franchised heritage is produced in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates it becomes clear that Western-dominated practices are often challenged and, perhaps more importantly, that new ways of understanding, producing and living with heritage are being articulated in these previously marginal locations.

The book offers innovative insights into heritage as a transnational process, exploring how it operates within local, national and international identity concerns and debates. It will appeal to scholars and students interested in critical heritage studies, museums, tourism, cultural studies and Middle Eastern studies.

1 Cultural heritage development in Abu Dhabi

The development of large-scale transnational museums in the Gulf has often served to overshadow the history of museums in the Gulf States, however, the genealogy of museum development in the Arabian Peninsula can be traced back to the 1950s (Hirst 2012; see also Erskine-Loftus 2010, 2013b; Bouchenaki 2011; Al-Ali 2013; Al-Ragam 2014; Bouchenaki and Kreps 2016) (Table 1.1). The development of museums in the region is complex and multi-faceted and has varied depending upon the different social, political and economic influences of each nation (Wakefield Forthcoming). The initial museological trend in the region was to turn historic forts into national museums (Prager 2015) using ethnographic representations.¹ Key themes focused on pearling (Penziner-Hightower 2014; Thabiti-Willis 2016), Bedouinity (Prager 2015) and the role and legitimacy of the ruling elite in national development and economic transformation. The region’s early museums played a key role in the production of national symbolism and identity (on Qatar see Al-Mulla 2014 and on the UAE see Penziner-Hightower 2014; Simpson 2014; Prager 2015). Arguably, it was through the process of nation building that ‘traditions’ were ‘invented’ (Hobsbawm and Ranger 2010) and put on display within these early museums. In the process, the emergent museographic landscape sought to create ‘imagined communities’ in the service of the state (Anderson 2006). Yet these early museums were often developed in consultation with international museum and heritage practitioners (Exell and Wakefield 2016: 2) and as such drew on the principles and practices of Western European museological traditions (Bouchenaki and Kreps 2016: xv). Although, these early museums were overtly connected to a national past, they explicitly connected with global models of museums and transnational museum practices, which is often overlooked within examinations of national, or the broader autochthonous, museum and heritage formations.

Table 1.1 Museum developments in the Arabian Peninsula

Institution	City and state	Date
Kuwait Museum	Kuwait City	1957
Failaka Museum	Failaka Island, Kuwait	1964
Fujairah Museum	Fujairah, UAE	1970
Dubai Museum	Dubai, UAE	1971
Al Ain National Museum	Al Ain, Abu Dhabi, UAE	1971
Qatar National Museum	Doha, Qatar	1975–2004
Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography	Muscat, Oman	1978–1999
Oman National Museum	Muscat, Oman	1978
Museum of Islamic Art	Doha, Qatar	2008
Mathaf	Doha, Qatar	2010
Oman National Museum	Muscat, Oman	2016
Etihad Museum	Dubai, UAE	2017
Louvre Abu Dhabi	Abu Dhabi, UAE	2017
King Abdulla Aziz Center (Ithra)	Dharan, KSA	2017
Jameel Art Centre	Dubai, UAE	2018
Qasr Al Hosn	Abu Dhabi, UAE	2018
Sheikh Abdulla Al Salem Cultural Centre	Kuwait City, Kuwait	2018
Qatar National Museum	Doha, Qatar	2019

Source: Table compiled by the author.

Private museums have also played an important role in the museological landscape of the Arabian Peninsula (Hirst 2012). For example, Exell has argued, using the Sheikh Fasial bin Qassem Al-Thani Museum in Qatar as a case study, that private collecting is a direct manifestation of Qatari socio-cultural dynamics, which offers a counter-discourse to state-sanctioned heritage narratives (Exell 2013a, 2014). However, her analyses fail to account for the elitist nature of the collection and Sheikh Faisel’s position as a member of the ruling elite. Aubry in his examination of traditional costume collections in the Arabian Peninsula offers a more nuanced interpretation of private collecting. Arguing that the role of the private collector and their choices regarding what to collect is fundamental to understanding their broader role within the cultural heritage landscape of the Gulf States (Aubry 2014). Kelly (2016), in her analyses of Kuwait, suggests that private museums provide evidence of a more community-centred ‘holistic’ approach to collecting and audience engagement. Due to the scope of this book and limited access to private collections in the UAE the current analysis does not include a discussion of private collecting or private museums in the UAE.

Since the early 2000s, large-scale, state-led museum projects such as the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi and the National Museum of Qatar (to name but a few) has attracted large-scale media interest, locally, nationally and internationally. It is no exaggeration to say that the last two decades have witnessed a ‘museum-boom’ in the Gulf States. As a result large-scale museum projects have been completed in Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, UAE (Table 1.2) and Saudi Arabia, which demonstrate the sheer speed and scale at which museum developments are happening in the Gulf States. As a result, interest in academic studies on the region has also grown. In particular, a number of edited works have attempted to fill gaps in the literature by providing a case-study analyses of museum and heritage developments in the Gulf. Two edited volumes by Erskine-Loftus (2013a, 2014) take a predominantly practice-based approach by examining professional practice in the context of museum development and newly emergent collecting policies and practices. While Exell and Rico (2014) engage with some of the ways in which cultural heritage discourses are constructed and put to use in the region. Mejcher-Atassi and Schwartz (2012) provide an analysis of the methods and processes that have been applied to collecting, specifically in archives and museums in the region. The edited volume by Erskine-Loftus, Penziner-Hightower and Al-Mulla (2016) addresses various issues relating to national identity and museums in the Arabian Peninsula, whereas, the edited volume byExell and Wakefield (2016) provides an examination of museum and heritage practices across the region by linking scales of development, local, regional and global, to regional and transnational processes. Finally, the forthcoming volume, Museums of the Arabian Peninsula: Historical Developments and Contemporary Discourses examines the historical and contemporary emergence of museums in the Arabian Peninsula as a discursive and interconnected process (Wakefield Forthcoming).

Table 1.2 Timeline of cultural heritage developments in the United Arab Emirates

Date	Institution	Emirate
1968	National Center for Documentation and Research	Abu Dhabi
1969	Al Ain National Museum (currently under renovation)	Al Ain
1971	Dubai Museum	Dubai
1981	Abu Dhabi Cultural Foundation	Abu Dhabi
1981	The National Library	Abu Dhabi
1987	Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilization	Sharjah
1987	Ras al-Khaimah National Museum	Ras al-Khaimah
1991	Ajman Museum	Ajman
1991	Fujairah Museum	Fujairah
1993	Emirates Heritage Club	Abu Dhabi
1993	Sharjah Archaeology Museum	Sharjah
1995	Bait Al Naboodah	Sharjah
1996	Sharjah Science Museum	Sharjah
1997	Sharjah Art Museum	Sharjah
1997	Sharjah Natural History Museum and Desert Park	Sharjah
1997	Al Hisn Fort Museum	Sharjah
1997	Naif Museum	Dubai
1999	Bait Sheikh Saeed bin Hamad Al Qasimi (closed for restoration)	Sharjah
2000	Umm al Quwain Museum	Umm al Quwain
2005	Sharjah Heritage Museum (established; renovated in 2012 as part of the heart of Sharjah project)	Sharjah
2008	Sharjah Classic Cars Museum (first opened; re-opened in 2013/currently under renovation)	Sharjah
2009	Classical Cars Museum (2013 relocated to Ain Al Fida)	Abu Dhabi
2010	Sharjah Heritage Museum	Sharjah
2017	Louvre Abu Dhabi	Abu Dhabi
2017	Etihad Museum	Dubai
2018	Qasr Al Hosn Museum	Abu Dhabi
2019	Al Shindiga Museum (Phase one)	Dubai
2019	Qasr Al Watan	Abu Dhabi

Source: Table compiled by the author.

What is clear is that each state has focused on museum and heritage development in varying ways depending on their cultural heritage policies and priorities. In the UAE for example, each Emirate has taken its own approach to cultural heritage development, which has been shaped by the strategic direction of the rulers, the Emirate specific cultural authorities and the availability of economic resources. More specifically, Pianese (2018) has argued that Abu Dhabi is taking a ‘globalized approach’ prioritising tourism and events; Sharjah a ‘localized approach’ and Dubai a ‘global creative approach’. Architectural analyses have focused on the emergence of new urban centres (see Elsheshtawy 2004, 2013; Alraouf 2016a) and the challenges of conservation and revitalisation (on Bahrain see Alraouf 2010, 2014; on Doha Scharfenort 2014; Alraouf 2016b and Al-Mulla 2016; on Kuwait Nakib 2016; and on the UAE Elsheshtawy 2019). Exell (2016a) explores the relationship between museum developments and modernity in the Gulf States. However, the analysis relies heavily on the Qatari museums landscape where the author is currently based as well as limited analysis of Bahrain and the UAE (for more detailed analysis on Bahrain see earlier work by Fibiger (2011) and on Abu Dhabi see earlier work by Wakefield (2011, 2012, 2013, 2014) on cosmopolitanism and universalism and Prager (2015) on heritage festivals and national identity in the UAE).

In general, the study of museum development has been split into two oppositional frameworks, which are assumed to be either ‘traditional’ or ‘modern’ (Abu-Lughord 1998; Erskine-Loftus 2013b). Other dichotomies have also been applied to the museum and heritage developments in the Gulf: Western or non-Western, tribal or modern, national or transnational. These dichotomies draw on essentialised notions of identity and orientalist discourses (Exell and Rico 2013), the West is viewed as predominantly modern and material and the Arabian Peninsula is seen as traditional and predominantly immaterial. A limited number of authors have attempted to consider heritage in a framework that considers both local and global processes (Fox, Moutada-Sabbah and Al-Mutawa 2006c; Fibiger 2011; Al-Ragam 2014; Wakefield 2015). This book contributes and builds on these debates, especially my earlier work on franchising, cosmopolitanism and universalism (Wakefield 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014) by providing an in-depth and critical discussion of the emerging cultural heritage landscape in Abu Dhabi. My analysis seeks to go beyond works that have discussed museum developments as a response to modernis...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1 Cultural heritage development in Abu Dhabi
• 2 Transnational heritage
• 3 Cultural heritage franchising
• 4 Globalisation and bilateral heritage
• 5 Cultural capacity and professional practice
• 6 Cross-border translations
• 7 Autochthonous heritage
• 8 New light: the Louvre Abu Dhabi
• 9 Shifting dynamics
• References
• Index