Abu Dhabi mounts $3bn Picasso exhibition and plans a cultural revolution « Peter J. Cooper’s Weblog

Picasso remains an enigma and Abu Dhabi wants to be seen as more than an oil reserve. Yet for most of Picasso’s life Abu Dhabi was a tiny village on the edge of the Persian Gulf with an impoverished population. As late as 1966 Sheikh Shakhbut was deposed because he refused planning permission for the first concrete building in Abu Dhabi.