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Louvre is planning to follow in the footsteps of Guggenheim and sign a contract with the united Emirates.

Louvre in Paris

The contract is according to Le Monde worth around € 700 mill. The agreement will allow the Arabs to build a modern Louvre in the luxurious tourist paradise Saadiyat Island at Abu Dhabi. The plan is to make a brand extension and put some of the collections at Louvre on permanent display there.  The plan has caused uproar among a number of heavy weight art historians and museum directors in France and abroad. Originally the protest was voiced by three heavyweights in the French art world, Françoise Cachin, former director of French museums; Jean Clair, former director of the Picasso Museum; and Roland Recht, a leading art historian

Not for sale
“Museums are not for sale,” stated the headline of an opinion article in Le Monde. “From a moral point of view,” the authors wrote, “one can only be shocked by the commercial and promotional use of masterpieces from our national heritage.” France should lend works of art, they said, but without charge. “Objects of our heritage are not consumer goods,” they added. “And to protect them is to guarantee their universal value for tomorrow.”

Petition, uproar, and critique
A French art Web site, La Tribune de l’Art, quickly organized a petition endorsing Le Monde’s article and demanding “preservation of the integrity of the collections of the French museums.” The petition has of now been signed by 1300 French as well as foreigners. The critique that has met the uproar was later dissected in a leader.

No, no, and no
No, we are not opposed to exhibitions, nor exchange, nor loans of art, the webzine claims.
No, we are not against making a profit out of a museum.
No, we are not against working in partnership with certain countries in the world and not others.
No, this is not a French issue. Artists and museums from all over the world have signed the appeal against the proposal.
No, most museums in the world do not practice this marketing of their ‘brand’. Only Guggenheim with its branch in Bilbao and The Hermitage in St. Petersburg works in this manner.
No, it is not an old practice. French pieces of art have been on permanent loans, but only to French Museums.
No, the collections are not vast and inexhaustible.
And no, they do not stem from ancient thievery, but from the royal, imperial and republican collections.
So claims the editor of the webzine, Didier Rykner. Thus disregarding the fact, that at least the Egyptian collection, which was created by Napoleon during the Egyptian campaign, must be seen as just as disreputable as the Elgin Marbles in London.

French government and oil-interests
Commentators also agree that the sale of the “Louvre” as a brand apparently has been decided at top level in the French government and that the directors at Louvre were totally bypassed in the decision process. Accordingly it is expected that the sale will go through in spite of the massive protests currently underway among the French cultural elite. Too many international oil-interests are at stake. Le Monde has somehow gotten hold of the contract that presumably will be signed in the end of January.  According to the contract the French museums involved shall furnish the Arabian museum with four temporary expositions and approximately 300 pieces on permanent loan for ten years. The 300 pieces will be recycled at least every second year. The new museum will be universal and artefacts shall stem from all the collections of the national French Museums. The money is supposedly to go to the French government and only to some extent be used for conservational projects.

Who do art collections belong to
The issue is however interesting. Do art collections exclusively belong to the nations where they more or less by chance ended up? Or do they belong to our common human heritage? How do we secure access to them?  Is that done by relocating them to exotic tourist locations characterised in the promotional material as playgrounds for the rich and mighty including berthing for boats, boutique hotels, luxury apartments plus a mediatheque, an oceanarium, a Maritime Museum, a National Museum, a Modern Art Museum and a “Louvre”? Or should one rather disperse the collections in a number of locations throughout the nation?

Read more at Le Monde: Link  and at Tribune de la Art: Link