In all the negative news out there, I found this encouraging:

A group of more than 130 artists, including many prominent figures in the Middle Eastern art world, says it will boycott the $800 million Guggenheim museum being built in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, unless conditions for the foreign laborers at the site are improved.

   And…

The artists’ group says it is responding to a range of abuses that have been reported on the island, including the failure of contractors to repay recruitment fees — which can lead to crippling debt for laborers — hazardous working conditions and the arbitrary withholding of wages. Such problems are not uncommon in a region where almost all low-skilled jobs are performed by foreign workers with few legal rights.

“Artists should not be asked to exhibit their work in buildings built on the backs of exploited workers,” Walid Raad, a Lebanese-born New York artist who is one of the boycott’s organizers, said in a statement. “Those working with bricks and mortar deserve the same kind of respect as those working with cameras and brushes.”

   And…

The first concerns over labor conditions at Saadiyat Island were raised in a report by Huam Rights Watch, an advocacy group, in 2009. It said that laborers hoping to work in the Emirates pay fees to recruiters in their home countries of up to several thousand dollars, which can take years to pay back and put them in serious debt before they even start their jobs. Once they arrive, the report said, contractors have complete control over their welfare, often taking their passports and leaving them nowhere to turn when wages go unpaid. Some workers on Saadiyat said that companies threatened to fine them if they tried to quit.

   Good for the artists.