The Louvre in the Desert

$520 million, that is the amount that Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, agreed to pay to attach the Louvre’s name to a museum that it hopes to open in 2012. And there is more: in exchange for art loans, special exhibitions and management advice, Abu Dhabi will pay France an additional $747 million.

For Abu Dhabi, the deal is an important step in its plan to build a $27 billion tourist and cultural development on Saadiyat Island, opposite the city. The project’s cultural components include a Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, a maritime museum and a performing arts center as well as the Louvre Abu Dhabi.

The Louvre Abu Dhabi, designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel as a 260,000-square-foot complex covered by a flying-saucer-like roof, is expected to cost around $108 million to build. Planned as a universal museum, it will include art from all eras and regions, including Islamic art.Jean Nouvel is not planning to build a single gargantuan building, but rather a "microcity" -- a cluster-like collection of differently sized building types directly by the sea. The ensemble will be dominated by a great, light-flooded dome, conceived of as a symbolic link between world cultures.The dome is "made of a web of different patterns interlaced into a translucent ceiling which lets a diffuse, magical light come through in the best tradition of great Arabian architecture," Nouvel says. That he, of all people, was commissioned to design this building was kept secret until the last moment. Nouvel already crafted an architectural bond between the East and the West 20 years ago, in the form of the Institut du Monde Arabe (1981-1987) in Paris.

The project will be overseen by a new International Agency for French Museums that is to include the Musée d’Orsay, the Georges Pompidou Center, the Musée Guimet, the Château de Versailles, the Musée Rodin, the Musée du Quai Branly and the Louvre among its members.
Apart from paying $520 million to the French agency for the use of the Louvre name for 30 years, with $195 million to be paid within one month, Abu Dhabi has also agreed to make a direct donation of $32.5 million to the Louvre to refurbish a wing of the Pavillon de Flore for the display of international art.

This gallery, to be ready by 2010, will carry the name of Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan, the founder and longtime ruler of the United Arab Emirates, who died in 2004.
Abu Dhabi will also finance a new Abu Dhabi art research center in France and pay for restoration of the Château de Fontainebleau’s theater, which will be named after Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan, the current president.

For a government-owned cultural institution in France to carry the name of a corporate or foreign donor is also a first and may well raise eyebrows here. In the past, for instance, the Louvre has turned down offers of financial help from philanthropists who asked that galleries be named after them in return.

Critics of the plan accused France of “selling its soul”, but the decision was made by the French government. It owns most major French museums and, by all accounts, President Jacques Chirac has concluded that this is one global market where France can compete effectively. On matters of state, the Louvre’s opinion, reportedly unenthusiastic in this case, carries little weight.

The first shot of criticism was fired last month by three leading lights of the French art world — including Françoise Cachin, a former director of French museums — who complained loudly not only about the Abu Dhabi project, but also about the Louvre’s current three-year loan agreement with the High Museum in Atlanta and a plan for the Georges Pompidou Center to open an annex in Shanghai.Their protest that France was “selling” its museums, chiefly by renting rather than lending artworks, prompted an Internet site (http://www.latribunedelart.com/) to organize the petition endorsing their position. Among those who have signed are numerous current and former directors and curators of leading museums, including the Musée de l’Orangerie, the Musée d’Orsay, the Pompidou and even the Louvre.

One rumor circulating here this week was that Abu Dhabi had refused to display nudes or religious paintings, both pillars of Western art. But according to Le Monde, the draft agreement stated that the new museum could not reject artworks for “unreasonable motives.” Francine Mariani-Ducray, the current director of French museums, also denied that Abu Dhabi had placed restrictions on art lent by France.

Source: The NY Times Art, Spiegel Online Intl