The Gulf: High Culture/Hard Labor is a chronicle of a campaign at the forefront of a new wave of worldwide cultural activism. The Gulf Labor Coalition is a cosmopolitan group of artists and writers who are pressuring Western cultural institutions, including the Louvre, Guggenheim, British Museum and New York University, over their exploitation of the migrant workers building their outposts on Saadiyat Island – the so-called 'Island of Happiness' off the coast of Abu Dhabi in the UAE.