LOUVRE ABU DHABI | Highway Gallery | 2018
Turning a Desert Highway into the World's First Gallery / Louvre Abu Dhabi "Highway Gallery"
You're driving down a desert highway when the radio suddenly starts explaining Van Gogh. Outside your window: a giant "self-portrait." What Louvre Abu Dhabi pulled off was basically a free sample of an entire museum.
The problem
Louvre Abu Dhabi opened in 2017, but just two months in, it had a problem: only tourists were showing up, not local residents. For people in the UAE, museums simply weren't part of daily life. The first step was getting people to see the museum as somewhere worth going at all.
The insight
The answer borrowed a page from consumer goods marketing: hand out free samples. Except instead of a product, what they'd sample was the museum experience itself. The highway connecting Dubai and Abu Dhabi carries 12,000 commuters every day, people who spend that drive listening to the radio and staring out at the desert. That attention was too good not to use.
The idea
Ten masterpieces from the Louvre Abu Dhabi collection were reproduced as massive frames, each 9 by 6 meters, and installed along more than 100 km of the highway. Each frame was fitted with solar-powered FM equipment that automatically synced with car radios as drivers approached, triggering an audio guide for that specific artwork. The result: drivers got to experience the museum itself while still on the road.
What happened
By the end of the installation period, the decline in visitors had reversed. Media coverage and social media mentions grew significantly, and the following year a second edition, "Tolerance Gallery," was launched.
Afterthought
The shift in thinking here really works: instead of sampling a product, they sampled an experience. All they did was turn a highway into a gallery and a car radio into an audio guide, yet that was enough to turn the museum into a place people felt they should visit. I'd love to hear Van Gogh's voice on a desert road myself.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Gold 2018
