The Louvre is the most well-known and visited museum in the world. Transporting its brand from central Paris to an unknown island in Abu Dhabi is no straight-forward task. It raises manifold questions about what the two museums share and how they’re different. Questions which, two years after opening, Louvre Abu Dhabi still weren’t clear on the answers to. While the partnership between Abu Dhabi and France sought to create the Emirate’s first museum and inspire a museum-going nation, it had become more a tourist spot than a cultural space for the local community. We were appointed to help bring unity and clarity to what the Louvre described as “France’s largest cultural project abroad.”