The Abu Dhabi branch of the Louvre has been forced to replace a map accompanying an exhibit after it appeared to wipe off Qatar, with which the emirate is in an international spat.
The map showed the northern shoreline of the Arabian peninsula, which is shared by Qatar, a small peninsula, and the United Arab Emirates, of which Abu Dhabi is the capital.
It contained a marker showing where the exhibit was found, but further up the coast the Qatar peninsula had disappeared. The UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are leading a boycott of Qatar, claiming that it supports Iran and terrorism. They are furious at its support for the Muslim Brotherhood and other opposition and Islamist movements across the region.
The row escalated last week when the UAE claimed that Qatari jets had intercepted two commercial airliners heading for Bahrain.
The country’s disappearance from the map was pointed out by an academic on Twitter, Kristian Ulrichsen, and taken up by Sheikha Mayassa al-Thani, the sister of Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani of Qatar. One of the world’s leading art collectors, she is in charge of Qatar’s well-funded museums and art galleries. “Although the notion of museums is a new one to Abu Dhabi, surely the @MuseeLouvre is not okay with this?” she wrote.
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The Louvre, a joint venture between the emirate and the main museum in Paris, opened in November, amid criticism of the UAE’s human rights record and its treatment of workers who built it.
It was then the subject of further controversy when it announced that it had acquired and would put on show Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, the most expensive painting sold at auction, for $450 million. It was revealed that the middle man, a Saudi prince, was a close business associate of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and there were persistent rumours that he was the real new owner.
Sheikha Mayassa’s tweet was taken up by other social media users, who put pressure on the Louvre to intervene.
Yesterday Qatar had been restored to the map, with the emirati authorities insisting that the omission had been a mistake and not politically motivated. It was “an oversight blown out of proportion”, the UAE’s foreign minister, Anwar Gargash, replied, also on Twitter.