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Louvre Abu Dhabi Names New Director

Souraya Noujaim returns to the museum where she previously spent five years as its collections director.

The Art Journal8 October, 2026
Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi / Photo Yiorgis Yerolymbos.

Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi / Photo Yiorgis Yerolymbos.

Souraya Noujaim has been appointed director of Louvre Abu Dhabi, the emirate's Department of Culture and Tourism has announced. She succeeds Manuel Rabaté, who stepped down in February after a decade in the post to lead the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in New Delhi.

An art historian and curator specialising in Islamic art history and archaeology, Noujaim was most recently director of the Department of Islamic Art at the Musée du Louvre in Paris, where she oversaw 18,000 works. She served as Louvre Abu Dhabi's first scientific, curatorial and collections director, from 2018 to 2023. When the museum opened in 2017, roughly 30 percent of the works on view were its own; now close to two-thirds are.

The appointment lands before a busy season on Saadiyat Island: the inaugural edition of Frieze Abu Dhabi opens on 18 November, Christie's will hold its first auction in Abu Dhabi the same month, and Guggenheim Abu Dhabi opens in December.

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