The Louvre has appointed Manuel Rabaté to head its new museum in Abu Dhabi, the Art Newspaper reports. Rabaté has been the director of Agence France-Muséums since 2013, and will helm the museum as it prepares to open next year. (more…)
Paris’s Fiac fair will feature performance art for the first time this fall, launching a festival of works at the Louvre beginning shortly before the fair and running through its conclusion. “This is an exciting new development as people are not always aware that the Grand Palais and the Palais de la Découverte are part of one and the same architectural ensemble, opening on to each other although access has been closed for decades,” says Jennifer Flay, the director of Fiac. (more…)
The Louvre has reopened following the massive flooding that swept through Paris last week, causing over €1 billion in damage to the city, and €1.5 million in lost revenue to the museum itself. (more…)
The Louvre has invited artist JR to install one of his signature works on the surface of its iconic glass pyramid, obscuring its surface to mirror the palatial architecture behind it. The installation is part of the artist’s recently opened retrospective at the museum, Contemporary art – JR at the Louvre. (more…)
The Louvre and the nation of Iran have negotiated a historic deal agreeing to shared exhibitions, and collaborations on publications, scientific visits and training sessions, as well as cooperation on archaeological digs. The agreement was signed during an Iranian diplomatic visit in Paris, at the Elysée Palace. (more…)
Paris Museums are still reeling from attacks in the nation’s capital last month, with attendance at the Louvre down 35% from the same two month period last year. The drop is in part attributed to “instructions issued by the ministry of education forbidding schools from visiting museums,” says a museum spokeswoman. (more…)
A Jeff Koons exhibition planned to open this year at the Louvre has been canceled after a reported “lack of funding,” according to Artforum. The exhibition had been previously reported to consist of a number of the artist’s balloon animal sculptures. (more…)
An article in The Economist charts the ongoing progress of The Louvre Abu Dubai, part of the Saadiyat Island Cultural District being built on a sandbar off the course of the U.A.E. city. “It will be a museum of and for the world,” says Rita Aoun-Abdo, head of the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority. (more…)
Jean-Luc Martinez, director of The Louvre, is in The Art Newspaper this week, discussing his ambitious plans to renovate and “revolutionize” the centuries old museum. Martinez’s plans involve rehanging, relighting and relabeling most of the works in the museum galleries, and is the beginning of what the director sees as a “complete makeover” of the museum. (more…)
The Louvre’s new expansion in Abu Dhabi will be announcing 300 loans from its Paris counterpart and twelve other French museum partners by the end of the year, The Art Newspaper reports. The works on loan will rotate over the course of the next ten years, joining up with about 500 new acquisitions that will make up the new museum’s permanent collection. (more…)
With the busy summer season in full swing, popular European museums are examining new methods of crowd control in an effort to curb the ever-growing hustle and bustle that could cause damage to both visitors and the art itself. Some museums such as the Louvre and the Prado in Madrid have pursued softer methods like timed tickets and extended hours. Others such as the Vatican Museums and the Uffizi in Florence have taken a harder line. Within the next year the delicate frescoes of the Sistine Chapel will be protected by a crowd-limiting climate control system while the Uffizi has already established a cap of 980 visitors at a time. (more…)
The Guardian reports on the exploits of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, the Nazi art theft division that was responsible for the theft of over 5 million works during its existence, including loot from the Uffizi, the Louvre, and countless churches across Europe. It is reported that one of the group’s most infamous prizes, the Mona Lisa, was rumored to have been recovered from an Austrian salt mine after the war, although recent research has determined that this loot was in fact a copy of the original work. (more…)
The Louvre’s iconic Greeks sculpture, Winged Victory of Samothrace, is set to begin a 9-month restoration process next month, the Wall Street Journal reports.Covered in years of dust and grime, the statue will be cleaned to return it to its original white color, and minor repairs will also be made to the statue itself. “It’s not only a Hellenistic masterpiece, it is also a historic example of 19th century art”says Ludovic Laugier, who heads the project for the Louvre. (more…)
A leaked letter from Sheikh Sultan bin Tahnoun Al Nahyan, the chairman of the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority, to the then director of the Louvre, Henri Loyrette has revealed frustrations between the Middle Eastern state and the French museum, which is currently planning for its new museum in the Gulf state. Written last year, the letter takes the Louvre to task for failing to spend a €25 Million gift from the country, and criticizes the Louvre for not minimizing the role of the Emeratis in the acquisition of works for the new museum. (more…)
The Louvre was forced to close on Wednesday, after 200 guards and surveillance agents went on strike to protest the growing number of often violent pickpockets at the museum. “For more than a year, pickpockets have come here every day,” Thierry Choquet, a member of the main union at the Louvre, said. “They threaten guards by telling them that they know where they live.” (more…)
French President François Hollande has announced Jean-Luc Martinez as the new director-president of the Louvre. Martinez, who previously served as head of the Greco-Roman antiquities department, will take over in the wake of a 7.5% cutback in the national cultural budget, and will also be responsible for finalizing loans for the construction of the Louvre’s new location in Abu Dhabi. (more…)
Eugène Delacroix’s iconic work “Liberty Leading the People” has been defaced by a vandal at the Louvre Museum in Lens, Northern France. The famous work was vandalized near closing time on Thursday evening by a woman described by prosecutors as “unstable.” The museum has already sent restoration experts to examine that damage, and has stated that the work should be “easily cleaned.” (more…)
The Louvre, together with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (which includes the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park), have created an agreement to collaborate on exhibitions and to share artwork. The five-year agreement allows for a partnership promoting lending in both cities as well as joint publications, conservation projects and educational programs. (more…)
Louvre Museum hosts its first ever catwalk show, a collection by Italian designer Salvatore Ferragamo. “The clothes’ light colored palette is on purpose and in tune with the Louvre’s light colored stone,” said Creative director Massimiliano Giornetti.
‬Photographer Nan Goldin awarded the Edward MacDowell Medal for lifetime achievement in the arts. As Luc Sante chairman of the selection committee remarks, Goldin created a medium “halfway between still photography and cinema.”
‪‬Leonardo da Vinci’s original ‘Mona Lisa’ painting has been redated from 1503-6 to 1503-19, with the Prado’s version and ‘Virgin Child with St Anne’ also possibly redated, the Louvre verifying such based on recent scientific work and additional drawings [AO Newslink]
‪‬The Art Newspaper releases figures on 2011 museum and exhibition attendance, The Louvre remains number one with 8,880,000 visitors [AO Newslink]
Paul Cézanne, Card Players, Qatar, via Vanity Fair
The royal family of Qatar has just publicized its $250-$300 million purchase of Card Players by Paul Cézanne. The work is one in a series of five, but until now was the only one remaining in private collection. Previous owner, Greek shipping mogul George Embiricos, became receptive to the sale just prior to his death in 2011. Vanity Fair reports that William Acquavella and Larry Gagosian were outbid for Card Players, at comparable amounts rumored up to $220 million. Even the low estimate of $250 million, factoring in exchange rate and tax fees, marks the highest sum in history ever paid for a single work of art in either auction or private sale by double.
Paul Cézanne, Card Players, Metropolitan Museum of Art, via New York Times
As the title indicates, the series depicts two low-brow card players in Aix-en-Provence. The peasants idealize an old world culture, nostalgic even to the middle-aged artist when he painted from his family’s country estate in the 1890s. At the time, Cézanne was working alone, and his isolation reflects in the sparing surfaces and minimal compositions of the varying card scenes. Only the subtlest of changes differentiate one painting from the next: most notably, the cards themselves change as the games progress, while the faces and suggestively sluggish interactions do not.
