Founded in 1981, visitors can experience the UAE’s first cultural centre dedicated to creation and appreciation Emirati arts and literature. A visionary who looked at a changing world through eyes that seemed to pierce the future, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan sought to engage the United Arab Emirates in cross-cultural dialogue with the wider international community from the outset, firmly establishing the UAE as a crossroads for various cultures – in the process revealing the nation’s welcoming openness to a culture of tolerance and hospitality. Committed to this vision to create an environment conducive to cultivating and elevating the mind which would also reach out to the world, leadership passed a law the same year to set up a cultural body whose aim was to nurture heritage and the arts in the fast developing nation.