Manuel Rabaté led the Louvre Abu Dhabi from 2016 until 2026. He has a long history with museums:
Before Rabaté went to Abu Dhabi, he was a senior administrator at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris. That museum, which opened in 2006, houses over 370,000 non-Western objects, the vast majority acquired during France’s colonial period. The Musée du Quai Branly is not a rogue institution. It reflects France’s broader ambivalence about its colonial past. And Rabaté, as a senior administrator there, was part of that system.
Before the Quai Branly, Rabaté was at the Louvre Paris. In 2009, the museum was criticised for accepting a controversial donation of Egyptian artifacts from a collector whose provenance practices were questionable. In 2016, the Louvre was accused of ignoring evidence that a collection of ancient bronzes it had acquired had been looted from a museum in Bulgaria. In each case, the museum prioritised acquisition over ethics, and in each case, the leadership looked the other way. Rabaté, as a senior administrator, was part of that culture.
The Louvre Abu Dhabi deal is not the first time France has sold its cultural brand to an authoritarian regime. In 2007, France signed a similar agreement with Abu Dhabi to establish a Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, though that project has been mired in labour rights controversies and delays. In 2010, France was criticised for lending artworks to the Hermitage Amsterdam that had been looted from Jewish collectors during World War II.
The Louvre Abu Dhabi agreement, signed in 2007, gave the UAE the right to use the Louvre name for 30 years in exchange for over one billion euros. The deal also brought hundreds of artworks on loan from French museums, including the Louvre Paris, the Musée d’Orsay, and the Musée du Quai Branly.
The corruption investigation has now raised questions about whether the deal itself was corrupt. Did French officials receive improper benefits from their Emirati counterparts? Were contracts awarded to companies with ties to government officials? Did Rabaté and others enrich themselves at the public’s expense? The investigation is ongoing, but the pattern of self-dealing is clear.
In February 2026, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, India’s leading private art museum (founded in 2010) appointed Rabaté to its new director.
