ABU DHABI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES.- The New York-based Guggenheim Foundation announced that Abu Dhabi would host its biggest museum ever. The Guggenheim will open a Frank Gehry-designed art museum in Abu Dhabi.

Guggenheim Foundation director Thomas Krens stated, “This is hugely ambitious, the scale of it is amazing, and they have the resources to do it. It will have an enormously beneficial impact on how creativity is viewed in this part of the world.”

Thomas Krens signed a deal with the government and royal family of the United Arab Emirates. The museum will be located on a manmade spit of land juts into the Persian Gulf from the currently uninhabited Saadiyat Island, next to Abu Dhabi. According to authorities the museum would cost more than US$200 million and will be completed in just over five years. Frank Gehry stated he just recently committed to building the new museum and had not yet decided on a design.

Frank Gehry said, “I want to play off the blue water and the color of the sand and sky and sun. It's got to be something that will make sense here. If you import something and plop it down, it's not going to work."

Gehry stated that the design would be unveiled in November, when the Guggenheim Foundation brings a collection of Russian modernist paintings to Abu Dhabi at the Emirates Palace hotel.