Defending & Lending The Louvre’s Name
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The French cultural minister, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres — who was in New York last weekend to confer the rank of Officer of the French Legion of Honor on the French-born director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philippe de Montebello — dismissed criticism of the deal to lend the name and collections of the Louvre museum to a new museum in Abu Dhabi. The deal, worth between $800 million and $1 billion to the French, is to be formally announced today in Abu Dhabi.
Asked about the comment by the Berlin museums chief, Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, to Bloomberg news that the Louvre-Abu Dhabi deal represented the commercialization of national culture, Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres said :”France is the country that fought for international recognition of the fact that cultural property is not like other property, and that states are founded to protect its diversity. I won’t take any lessons on the commercialization of culture.”
Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres was in New Orleans last week to attend the unveiling of an exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art of more than 80 paintings lent by French museums. The exhibition, called “Femme, femme, femme: Paintings of Women in French Society From Daumier to Picasso From the Museums of France,” is the fulfillment of a promise made by the French government in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to help the New Orleans museum recover.
In describing what he called France’s “new cultural strategy” Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres repeatedly used the French word rayonner, which means to radiate, like light. “This is the beginning of a new strategy of extending [rayonner] our culture to the rest of the world,” Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres said through a translator. He compared the planned Abu Dhabi museum to his decision to “open the doors of the Louvre and Versailles to the American film industry,” in order to stimulate cultural exchange.
As an example, Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres pointed to the fact that the Louvre is in the process of building a new wing for its collection of Islamic art. The construction was partly financed by a $20 million gift from a Saudi prince.
Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres is no stranger to controversy. In 2004, he was convicted by a French court of money laundering, for his activities on behalf of the Republican Party in the 1990s, while he was an aide to the defense minister, François Léotard. He was fined $20,000.
