Mohamed Al Mubarak

0:28Your next product launch is coming fast. People who want to see great art often go to the Louvre in Paris. But now there's another Louvre that's in Abu Dhabi. And there's about to be a Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi as well. Who's behind building these museums and other cultural attractions in Abu Dhabi? It's Mohammed Al Mubarak. He's the chairman of the Department of Culture and Tourism in Abu Dhabi. And I sat down with him recently in his office to talk about why Abu Dhabi wants to be a major cultural center and tourist attraction. For those people who aren't familiar with Abu Dhabi, where is Abu Dhabi?

1:01So Abu Dhabi is the capital city of the United Arab Emirates. It sits on the Arabian Peninsula. We are a connecting point between east and west from present day and throughout our history. The other major city that people know in UAE is Dubai. Yes, sir. And so Dubai and Abu Dhabi have attracted a lot of attention in recent years because they have a fair amount of wealth and a lot of tourism attractions. So let's just talk about, at the beginning, what your main mission is as the Minister of Culture and Tourism. What are you supposed to be doing in that role? I think what makes this job very interesting is the passion it instills in myself and all of my colleagues.

1:44We have something quite special here in Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates. What's special is that the continuous pursuit of the enhancement of quality of life. And that's not just for tourists. It's for the residents. It's for the Emiratis living here. We continuously work hand-in-hand with all our colleagues and our partners to create experiences to cater to their needs. So as you can see in Abu Dhabi and in the UAE, almost every single year there's addition of experiences. There's addition of institutions, additions of new concepts that come in and create these fantastic curated experiences for people to really cherish and enjoy.

2:21What is the population of Abu Dhabi? So the population of the UEE, slightly over 11 million people. And Abu Dhabi is a fraction of that? Yes. It's the largest land bank, as I said, the capital city. We're a little over 3.5 million people. Your position is to make sure that people come here and understand what the attractions are of Abu Dhabi, but you're building a lot of things. So how long have you been in this position? So I've been at Aldar for 20 years and at the Department of Culture and Tourism close to 10 years. And, you know, I'm very humbled and lucky to be working for a government that has visionary ideas.

3:01Their vision of investing in culture and culture institutions have not just been set forth in recent modern times, but from the inception of this country. The idea of basically enhancing it with entertainment projects, projects that are theme parks, projects that are public parks, beaches, etc., has always continuously evolved through the development of the UAE and Abu Dhabi. For those who are not familiar with Abu Dhabi, when did it become, as part of the UAE, an independent country? So as a country, it's 1971. But its history and the history of its people have dated back for thousands of years.

3:36And the founder of the country was Sheikh Zayed? Yes, the late founder of the country, the late father, Sheikh Zayed Anhaian. He was a visionary man. Through his vision, you see this country being created that caters to the wants and needs of its people. And, you know, his story is continued on by his son, the current president, His Highness Sheikh Hamid bin Zayed. When was oil discovered in Abu Dhabi? So oil was discovered prior to the formation of the country. It was discovered and when it was discovered, it was thought of how am I going to utilize this natural resources like we've always utilized our natural resources to find value, to create value for our people.

4:17I see. But before oil was discovered, the main business in this part of the world or Abu Dhabi was what? You know, through time we've always utilized our natural resources, whether it's pearls, whether it's copper. We've always been a trade partner. You know, our ancient trade routes, whether it were ancient Mesopotamia to ancient China. We've always traded natural resources throughout time. We've always utilized that. And just like we've utilized oil, the next step is utilizing the most important natural resources, which is us people, human beings. Let's talk about some of the museums you're building or have already built.

4:53So when I want to go see the Louvre, I usually go to Paris. But now I found out you have your own Louvre. Is that connected to the one in Paris? By name, but not by curatorial intent or by musography. So the Louvre Abu Dhabi, of course, is in partnership with the Louvre Paris and is in partnership with AFM, which is the Asian French Museums. That partnership is a longstanding partnership that continuously flourishes. In that partnership, there is a transfer of knowledge that's being transferred on a daily basis. There's loans that come from the different French museums. That's compounded with the acquisitions that we acquire for our assets and with the team building that we have created from the opening of this museum.

5:35And they lend you some things from time to time and you lend them some things? Absolutely. So are they going to lend the Mona Lisa anytime soon? Maybe, maybe. You know, currently we have one of the most beautiful paintings in our museums at the Louvre Abu Dhabi is Da Vinci's John the Baptist. And it's quite beautiful because the way we have the museography of the Louvre Abu Dhabi is quite interesting because it gives you a one-to-one view of everything you're looking at, whether it's a painting, whether it's an artifact. It is very sort of inept in creating a passionate interaction with what you're looking at.

6:09You're building another art museum of the Guggenheim. Now, Louvre's big enough. Why do you need a Guggenheim as well right next door? I think that's a great question. It's, I think, the beautiful thing about the UAE and Abu Dhabi is we live with over 200 nationalities. And in doing so, they have become a part of the country's and the city's fabric. And we need to celebrate that. So we need to celebrate everybody's identity, everybody's background, everybody's heritage, everybody's history. And what a beautiful way in doing so in these beautiful institutions. These museums are educational institutions and they're community institutions.

6:43So we wanted to curate really a story where you come to Saidiyaat Cultural District. And if you allow me to curate the story, you start off at the Natural History Museum. At the Natural History Museum, you get a glimpse and you get an understanding of how we came to be, how our earth came to be, how our universe came to be from a scientific perspective. Once you leave the Natural History Museum, you go to our national museum, the Sheikh Zayed National Museum. There you understand the history of this great land, not just the history of the country, but the people of this land that have been a part of this land for over 300 ,000 years.

7:14You get a glimpse of what the past and the present and the future looks like here in the UAE. From there, you maneuver yourself to the Louvre Abu Dhabi, which is a beautiful universal museum. It is universal in its thematic approach. So there you basically see a part of you on an equal pedestal with the entire world. Then you leave to the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, which is a contemporary art museum focusing on art from the late 1940s to today. But it looks at it at a truly global perspective. So yes, you will see art from Pollock or Rothko or Basquiat or Warhol, but it's going to be side by side by artists from Kenya, from Nepal, from the Philippines.

7:55and all over the world. We have taken it upon ourselves to make sure that art within the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is showcased not just from a Western perspective, but a truly global South perspective. If you were going to build a modern or contemporary art museum, why couldn't you just build one? Why did you have an affiliation, or why do you have an affiliation with Guggenheim? What can they do for you? So it's a mixture of things, similar to the Louvre. First is a fantastic opportunity of transfer of knowledge, working side by side with that fantastic team at the Guggenheim New York and the Guggenheim Bilbao, and working on how we can detail this museum together.

8:26Compounded by that, you know, you're taking years and blueprints of acquisition committees, of curatorial committees, museography committees, and you're taking them and then you're evolving them to your wants and to your needs. Museums are great, and I'm involved with a number of museums myself in the United States, but also there are performing arts parts of the cultural world. Are you involved in performing arts as well? Absolutely. I mean, UNESCO designated Abu Dhabi as a city of music. Music is very close to our heart. As I said, you know, when you live with over 200 nationalities, they bring in their musical touches to the story.

8:59So, you know, our events calendar is filled with music, from everything from classical music to hip-hop to pop to Korean pop to dance, and the list goes on. And, you know, since COVID, where the world told us people are not going to come to these live events, we have pretty much sold out every single live musical event, catering for all demographics. So you build a facility for these as well? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. And let me ask you, who is going to go to all these? Because their population is not that big. Do you have enough people that can fill up all these museums and performing arts arenas and so forth?

9:33So I think first and foremost is the why, as you rightfully said. Why are we building these? So when it comes to our cultural institutions, because we truly believe that culture is the backbone of any forward-thinking society. Culture has to be embedded in our DNA, like it always has been. So they're not, the institutions were not built for tourists. They're actually built for the residents here and for the future generations of residents here in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. And of course, then you have the tourism story. Last year, we had a little under 5.3 million tourists. We're looking to target this year a little bit over 6 million tourists.

10:06Where are your tourists principally coming from? Really from all over the world. But I think if I'm going to look at my top five destinations, you're looking at the Indian market, the Chinese market, the Russian market, the UK market, of course, the Western European market, whether it's Germany or France. So they're really coming from everywhere. What about the Americans? Are they showing up? Absolutely. So we have seen a double-digit growth over the last two years with American tourists coming from the US. I was chairman of the Smithsonian for a number of years, and very often when we had a popular museum attraction, we get calls who people wanted free tickets.

10:39tickets are free, but they wanted access. Do you ever get that kind of request? Yeah, and you know, the fact of the matter is, like I said, these museums are educational institutions. So first of all, all kids go in for free. All military personnel go in for free. Anybody over the age of 60 goes in for free. And then anybody who's doing research gets a heavily subsidized aspect of their ticket. They also get the right to basically enter all our research labs. So like I said, they are educational and community facilities. What about private equity people? They go on for free? If they sponsor. How can you free your team from time-consuming office tasks?

11:18Amazon Business empowers leaders to not only streamline purchasing, but better support their teams. Smart business buying tools enable buyers to find and purchase items fast so they can focus on strategy and growth. It's time to free up your teams and focus on your future. Learn more about the technology, insights and support available at amazonbusiness.com. So as we talk, there's a fair amount of turmoil in some parts of the Middle East, obviously. But what about this part of the Middle East? Is it affected by what's going on in Israel and Gaza and Syria and Lebanon or not so affected? I think first and foremost, one thing that we all as human beings look for is peace and harmony.

12:02You know, nobody wants to see devastation happening anywhere around the world, regardless if it's next to you or not next to you. The United Arab Emirates is home to over 200 nationalities from all over the world, different religions, different backgrounds, and the focus is really on how we keep our community safe and make sure that basically we work with entire diplomatic ties to make sure that we can find the solution that caters for the wants and needs of the overall world when it comes to peaceful coexistence. Now, in the United States, there's a big concern about immigration into the country as a political issue.

12:35Yes, sir. Here, you have a lot of immigrants coming in. More immigrants live here than people from the native part of Abu Dhabi, I assume. Is that a concern or is that not a problem? Not a problem because the fact of the matter is that we're still a developing country. We're still a developing city. Everything is done through a well-thought-of strategy. So it's not just basically let's just open our doors and everybody come in. You're looking for talent also. You know, teachers, nurses, doctors, engineers, these are people that are flying in here that are helping us grow. So sometimes when populations grow quickly, you see a lot of crime.

13:10You have a lot of crime here? It is one of the safest cities in the world. One, because there is a clear strategy and a plan for that. But two, everybody lives here, loves the way of life here. They want to sustain it. So everybody works hand in hand together to sustain that. So in Europe and the United States, you often see in major cities homeless people. I haven't seen any here, but maybe there are some. Is homelessness a problem? So when it comes to the local population, and this is where I always go back and say, you know, the government continuously works on enhancing the quality of life of the residents and the locals of the United Arab Emirates.

13:47So us as locals, you know, we have opportunities to get free land for housing. So free housing, free Medicare, subsidized power and water, and a job opportunity. So you are given the tools to succeed. And what you do after these tools is really up to you. Let's talk about your own background. So where were you born? I was born in Paris. Paris. Yes, sir. Paris, France. I moved back to Abu Dhabi and grew up here, had a fantastic upbringing. You know, the community, society was just amazing to be a part of it. Always seeing a sense of how leadership is so close to the people and how it always wants to make sure that the people are comfortable and happy.

14:30You know, my mother did an amazing job with my siblings and myself. We're very close together. You know, my brother and my sisters, we're all a very tight-knit family. How many siblings do you have? So I have an older brother and two older sisters. So we're four. Your older brother runs Mubarak, which is an investment arm of Abu Dhabi. Yes, sir. And your sisters, are they involved in Abu Dhabi in some way like you are? So my sister, Razan Al Mubarak, she works for the environmental agency here in Abu Dhabi. You know, she is an advocate of sustainability and safeguarding the environment. My other sister is a studied lawyer.

15:08And right now she has probably a very important job, which is focusing on her family. Now your brother once told me that you have a big comic book collection. So you still collect that comic books? And what are you going to do with them? So I fell in love with comics at a very early age. You know, I grew up, I remember as early as I can, every time I'd find a Superman comic or a Batman comic or an X-Men comic, whether it's DC or Marvel, I basically gobbled them up. I took them up and I ran up to my room and I sat in my corner and I basically just, I love the concept of creating something so imaginative, creating these worlds, you know, creating these characters that are actually so detailed, but they have so much weight to them.

15:54emotional way to them. I love that. I love the concept of storytelling. And that's what actually what my job's all about today. It's about storytelling, whether it's curating museums with the fantastic team, whether it's curating experiences in our theme parks, whether it's curating experiences, it's storytelling in itself. Finish your own story. Did you go to college in the United States? Yes, sir. So I went to college in Boston, Northeastern University. Amazing four years of my life. And what did you study? I started political science and economics. You didn't study museums. No, but I was always infatuated.

16:27So when you went to college in Boston, you told people you were from Abu Dhabi. What did they say? Did they know where it was? You know, I was lucky. You know, I went to a university and I went to a place where you had a lot of international university kids from all over the world. So they knew where UAE is. They knew where Abu Dhabi was. But they had, you know, not a lot of information about it. The funny thing right now is every single student I went to school with has come to the Abu Dhabi. And when they've come down here, they've called me and said, oh, you remember I was with you in freshman year?

16:59I was with you in sophomore year? I was with you here. And I said, yeah, of course, remember. He said, you know, we've come here. It is amazing. They ask you for free tickets to the Louvre or something like that? Sometimes they do. Sometimes they do. You know, I don't give my professors free tickets, but the students I do. If I was going to say to you, I'm going to leave the country in about an hour, I have to fly back to the United States. I've got an hour to visit something. what should I visit in my one hour? Due to our infrastructure, what I believe you can do in an hour, you being a cultural enthusiast, I would probably recommend you visit the Sheikh Zayed Mosque and you see it's this beautiful mosque.

17:34Which is one of the largest mosques in the world. Absolutely. And it's architectural, it's stunning. You get there, you get an understanding of this beautiful space. Maybe spend 20 minutes there and then if you have an hour and then it's a around 8 to 10 minute drive to Qasr al-Hassan, the oldest standing fort here in Abu Dhabi. It's in the center of the city. You also get a view of the entire sort of city. Spend 20 minutes there. And then you shoot out eight minutes later, you're at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, and then you're off to the airport. And currently at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, we have an amazing post-impressionist exhibition.

18:06Really, if you get a chance, it's amazing, some amazing Van Goghs. So you tick that box. You've had some NBA preseason games here. Are you planning on bringing any NBA teams here permanently or just for preseason? Sports in itself brings people together, regardless of what your background is. So we're big on sports entertainment. We started that with Formula One, in not just focusing on the sport itself, but creating musical experiences, food and beverage experiences, retail experiences, all engulfed over a weekend. And the whole city basically celebrates Formula One. Then you took it to another step further, where we took the engineering and the sports excellence component, and we've embedded it within our school programs and our different educational programs.

18:49And it's because since we've started Formula One to where we are today, now we have a strong list of female drivers, male drivers, racing and all aspects of racing within the UAE and beyond. So it is really a long-term partnership story with the sport itself. Same thing with UFC. We brought in UFC. Prior to the UFC investment, there was an investment in the sport of jiu-jitsu. Jiu-jitsu became a national sport. And today, we have over 750 ,000 jiu-jitsu fighters here in the UAE that have won global medals from all over the world. You can clearly see that we are investing not just in the sport, but in the infrastructure, both hard and soft.

19:28So Abu Dhabi is part, or the UAE, is part of what's called the Gulf Cooperation Council, which is a number of countries that are blessed with having some oil. I would say most of them have a fair amount of oil. They include Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain. So are these other countries jealous, saying, hey, don't bring all these tourists just to your country because we want to have some tourists too because they don't have anything quite like you have? Do they ever mention this to you? You know, on the contrary. We've heard sort of press, outside press talk about, for example, competitiveness between even Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

20:03But the fact of the matter is we all are complementary, country, similar to what we see in places like the U.S. or even Europe, just because of the size of the U.S. When people fly to the U.S., you know, their bucket list is to go to New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans, and the list goes on. Same thing in Europe. It's Paris, it's London, it's Rome, it's Milan, and the list goes on. When it comes to this region, like I said, it is widely connected. It is in close proximity to each other. So the tourists, in reality, will go to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Doha. So we're really all complementing each other with different experiences.

20:42Let's talk about another side of your life, which is building hotels or refurbishing hotels or apartment buildings, residential and so forth. So this area has grown so much that it is seen that some parts and people in Dubai are saying that there's not enough residential properties anymore for people who want to live here and work here. Are you building more residential properties in Abu Dhabi, and is this a real problem? Absolutely. It is a problem. It's a good problem to have. You know, you look at basically the growth story of a company like Aldar. You know, in 2008, we were launching two to three developments a year.

21:19Fast forward to this year, I've launched 14 new developments. So the scale is significantly larger. Our market cap has grown five-folds. So your company is a publicly traded company? Yes, sir. One of the things that is, you talk about the development aspect. So our development pipeline has grown eight-folds. If you look at just from a numbers perspective, you're going to say, who's buying here? In 2021, 11 % of my portfolio were international buyers. 2024, close to 30%. And these buyers are coming from all over the world, predominantly coming from Southeast Asia, Asia, Eastern Europe, Western Europe.

21:58And you might say, why? Now, why to me is a very easy question because they're coming to a place where there is, like I said, a continuous pursuit for quality of life, one of the safest cities in the world where safety comes first, Medicare comes first, the investment of government in education, Medicare, infrastructure, public safety is always front of mind. It's a place where it is continuously evolving to create policies to cater for the needs of the investor, cater for the needs of the buyer, of the homeowner. You look at all of our sort of sovereign funds, the Mubadilas, the IHCs, the ADQs of this world, the AGs of this world, not only are they investing outside, but they're also investing within, in very important sectors, agri-tech, AI, education, infrastructure, logistics.

22:47That is creating massive job opportunities in the UAE. and people from all over the world are taking these opportunities. So I almost look at the UE today as a place that is the land of opportunity. People are coming here and they're buying apartments. You don't have to be a citizen of Abu Dhabi to buy an apartment. No, sir. And when you buy an apartment here, can you become a citizen here? How hard is it to be a citizen or you don't need to be a citizen to live here? So you don't need to be a citizen to live here. In terms of your acquisitions, there's new policies that have been added, So long-term residencies, golden visas for you and for the entire family household, short-term residency visas.

23:25And also at the same time, there's opportunities for nationalization. You have no plans to do something else in government or you're going to stay in the private sector completely at some point. What is your future? The future really lies on the idea that we have to stop. We don't have to stop. We have to continuously evolve. We have to continuously be better. We have to continuously cater to the needs of what our future generation wants. And that's what makes the job special, because you're always thinking about the future. This is what makes the UAE special, is what's next for us. Let's suppose you were to summarize what you would like the average person in the world to know about Abu Dhabi.

23:59What would you say is the message you want to convey to people about this country? Seeing is believing. You know, the fact of the matter is, I think, we hear a lot of things. But in reality, you know, take a step further. You know, do your research and come. Because once you see what's happening here, it is very, very special. It's a place that is really a place of belonging, a place of connectivity, a place of understanding. And everything we are doing is for the next generation and the generation after that. So I would love for everybody to be a part of that with us. Thanks for listening. To hear more of my interviews, you can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen.