The Guggenheim’s Director, Richard Armstrong, has revealed the new opening date of Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi: 2026. Announced for the first time in 2006 and scheduled to open in 2012, the long-awaited project had many ups-and-downs. Located in the new cultural district of Abu Dhabi – in the Northwestern tip of Saadiyat Island – the building, unprecedented in scale, will feature the biggest space any Guggenheim Museum currently holds, with an approximate surface of 30,000 sqm. 

The museum will host 13,000sqm of gallery space and eleven cone-like structures providing further exhibition space. In each cone the visitors will be able to view site-specific artworks by contemporary artists. The galleries will be distributed around the atrium on 4 levels connected by glass bridges. Frank Gehry describes the project as “intentionally messy, that reaches clarity”.