The world's five best new museums
From Marrakech to Miami, the year's most exciting openings worth making the trip for
Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami
A new, purpose-built building – plus large sculpture garden – with latticed metallic frontage isn't all that dazzles about the re-opened ICA Miami. There's the free admission, which is positively revolutionary in a city famed for costliness. There's the languid Design District vibe. There's the presence of videography, installation and virtually every other medium. And there are the project spaces dedicated to up-and-coming artists, starting with Haitian-American abstract painter Tomm El-Saieh. Two further floors of exhibition space examine current practices and trends. Stay on Miami Beach at The Julia, a chilled-out, adults-only boutique hotel, where wine-and-cheese happy hours are held daily behind its Art Deco facade.
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Louvre Abu Dhabi
Abu Dhabi's Saadiyat Island is host to this sister venue to Paris’s Louvre, one which boldly aspires to recap "world cultural history". Manageably sized, the Louvre Abu Dhabi's galleries ignore chronology or geography, and instead mix up masterpieces of vastly different backgrounds, with a National Museum and the Frank Gehry-styled Guggenheim both due soon. First Chapters of Human Civilisation. The highlights include bronze Oba heads from Benin, and David's equestrian-style portrait of Napoleon. Just as gobsmacking is a main, honeycombed dome by French architect Jean Nouvel. Visit in 2018 and you can stay at the marina's new Abu Dhabi Edition hotel. Image © Louvre Abu Dhabi, photo Roland Halbe
Musee Yves Saint Laurent Marrakech
YSL lived in Morocco's "Red City", famously finding inspiration in its palettes and panache, hence the Musee Yves Saint Laurent Marrakech, which is dedicated to the designer's work. Twinned with a smaller counterpart in Paris, this temple to the designer's oeuvre contains thousands of accessories and items of clothing, plus drawings and photography. Everything is tres chic, right down to Studio KO's earthy clay exteriors – intended to mirror the "weft and warp of fabric". Fifteen minutes away in Marrakech's swish Palmeraie area is the palatial Es Saadi resort-hotel, where Saint-Laurent used to stay, which can arrange guided museum tours for guests, plus excursions around the city's shopping souks. Top image © Fondation Jardin Majorelle, photo Nicolas Matheus
Zeitz MOCAA
South Africa's answer to the Tate Modern? That’s the buzz about the vast Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, or Zeitz MOCAA. Eye-catchingly situated amid a former grain silo on Cape Town's V&A Waterfront, and glassily refurbished by British designer Thomas Heatherwick and his studio, its 100 galleries and nine storeys represent the continent's largest such institution. The exclusive focus is 21st-century African work, spanning Pop Art from patron Jochen Zeitz's collection and temporary photography, performance pieces and much, much more. Occupying six floors above is The Silo hotel, complete with spa, rooftop pool, restaurants, 28 luxury rooms and huge, curving windows.
Museum MACAN, Jakarta
As well as an acronym – of the Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art in Nusantara – ‘MACAN’ is also the local word for tiger. It's no coincidence: this new private gallery in Jakarta from local collector Haryanto Adikoesoemo roars with aesthetic authority. It occupies the fifth storey and utilises broad, open-plan rooms beyond an "infinity" garden. While multi-disciplinary works by international luminaries such as Andy Warhol and Yayoi Kusama are displayed, equal billing is quite rightly given to Indonesian artists. One such is Hendra Gunawan, whose luminous, swirling paintings also inspired the swanky Raffles Jakarta hotel lobby, spa and bedrooms. Image MET Studio Design
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