When you think of Abu Dhabi, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Skyscrapers? Sand? Or perhaps you're thinking, Abu where?
If you're in the latter camp, some quick facts.
Abu Dhabi is the second largest of the United Arab Emirates and also the capital.
Home to more than a million people, it is built on pearling, the oil trade and a founding story in which a deer discovers a desert oasis.
If you're in the skyscrapers and sand camp, you're right.
But you might be surprised to know that as well as shiny beach holidays and epic shopping malls, Abu Dhabi has plans to put itself on the world arts map in a spectacular fashion.
Already home to many expats, migrant workers and international brands, Abu Dhabi's rulers have invited big gun cultural institutions to set up camp on Saadiyat Island.
With opening projections a few times delayed, the Louvre Abu Dhabi (designed by Jean Nouvel) is supposed to open this year, although it was only a building site with a future-tense website when we visited mid-2014.
The interlaced roof design looks like a mishmash of a spider's web and the most intricate mag wheels ever.
It's not just the Louvre that's being pieced together.
Saadiyat Island, like the rest of Abu Dhabi, is growing rapidly under the hot desert sun.
We saw residential areas with brand-new rubbish bins still under wraps along footpaths still under construction with a backdrop of beach clubs, highways and hotels.
If we're not counting bars or pools as cultural institutions (though who's to say?), the only place to visit for our arts fix in the area was Manarat al Saadiyat.
Thanks to so much new construction in the area, our taxi driver got lost or dead-ended five times along the way.
Home to the Saadiyat Story (also under construction at the time), a gallery shop by the brilliant name of Artyfact and a roof-high tented sculpture of chairs, it was a temporary resting place for the British Museum's ''History of the World in 100 objects''.
This exhibition told a story of transition from wandering people to civilisation; from tools to trade and innovation.
It's worth bearing in mind that these, too, have been rapid chapters in the development of the United Arab Emirates, where the transition from fishing villages to modern metropolises has taken place over less than 70 years.
And there is more to come. Frank Gehry's Guggenheim, which, if all goes according to pre-digs and plans, will be open in 2017.
Concept drawings show a cacophony of rocket-cylinder cones and cuboids over a double A-frame entrance, but all we see is dust and dreams.
The official brochure tells us that the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi ''will be a pre-eminent platform for global contemporary art and culture that will present the most important artistic achievements of our time ... and ... celebrate the interconnected dynamics of artistic production locally, regionally and around the world and promote a truly transnational perspective on art history''.
Phew!
Reem Fadda, associate curator, says '' ... the vision of this project is larger than the actual size of the building''.
A sizeable endeavour, considering that it will be 12 times larger than Guggenheim's Frank Lloyd Wright landmark in New York.
The plan is to use the space to honour artists, voices and stories that could otherwise be lost in a rapidly shifting geographical and political landscape, with collections of previously dispersed work, such as that of Iraqi artist Shakir Hassan Al Said, alongside more recognisable, iconic work.
Again, though, this is all in the future tense.
Those who have travelled to Abu Dhabi will be familiar with the face of its founding father, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.
Currently, tributes to his benefaction are told in innocent poems throughout the dusty, crafty Heritage Village near the central Marina Mall, as well as in the statement building of the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, 12 years in the completing.
The Zayed National Museum on Saadiyat Island will be another, more high-tech tribute to his legacy.
Designed by Lord Norman Foster and in consultation with the British Museum, the concept plans show five proud falcon wings, an Emirati symbol soaring 124m high.
According to the official press, ''occupying the highest point in the area both figuratively and topographically, it will stand as a beacon of inspiration for all who look up to it''.
It is also set to open in 2017.
Is this how culture works?
Can you just import the best and learn the rest?
It's been controversial all the way. Workers' rights.
Western imports.
Who's telling whose story here?
It's only just begun, though.
And it's a long-term plan.
The building foundations we saw are just part of the revamp of the area.
There will be more museums, a New York University to go along with Abu Dhabi's existing Sorbonne.
The price tag is $US27 billion.
Twenty-seven billion.
Of that, $US520 million is for the naming rights to the Louvre.
But such money is small change to the owners of oil, especially in the knowledge that one day it may run dry.
And the local, regional and global cultural policies that Abu Dhabi has defined all rely on having a deep, diverse, sustainable cultural infrastructure.
The cultural capital of the Middle East.
I'm starting to sound like an official brochure myself.
It's hard not to when it's future tense.
But this I know: when you're done with the beaches and the bling and the malls, there is more yet to discover and record about this place.
I'd love to go back in 2020 or whenever it's done, to walk on the water to the Louvre, to stand in the air-conned Guggenheim cones, to see the falcons soar.
