Rendering of Frank Gehry’s planned Abu Dhabi golf clubhouse
A 19th hole by Frank Gehry?
Apparently the architect is having such a good time on Saadiyat Island, where his Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is to supposed to open in late 2013, that he’s accepted another commission there.
The Abu Dhabi-based The National reports that the golf clubhouse Gehry is designing will “put a postmodern twist on the traditional garb [the khandoura] worn by Arab men.”
(Looking at the above-linked image of a clean-lined khandoura, I think you could say that “twist” is the operative word.)
Gehry’s creation will be added to the just-opened golf course designed by legendary champion Gary Player for the Saadiyat Beach Golf Club.
But what’s the status of the Guggenheim’s satellite museum? Eleanor Goldhar, the Guggenheim’s deputy director and chief of global communications (an upgrade from “deputy director for external affairs”?), told me that although the schedule for opening has not been altered, groundbreaking still hasn’t occurred. (Director Richard Armstrong had told me last February that groundbreaking might occur as early as last autumn.)
And in other Gehry news: Julie Gustafson, development manager for the Ohr-O’Keefe
Museum of Art, Biloxi, MS, informs me that her institution will open three of its five buildings in November. The project had been seriously derailed in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the site just 11 months before the planned opening. Gehry has designed five new structures for the museum’s new campus, which features his George Ohr Gallery Pavilion, below.
The Biloxi museum’s opening exhibitions will include: the eponymous potter, George Ohr; Andy
Warhol; Jun Kaneko; Richmond Barthe. (The “O’Keefe” of the museum’s name refers to its family of leading benefactors, not Georgia O’Keeffe, the artist.)
