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  • Faust
    kitsch killer
    • Sep 2006
    • 37852

    Louvre name for sale.



    Hmmm, sounds like prostitution to me...</p>

    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/wo...gewanted=print</p><div class="timestamp">March 6, 2007</div>

    <h1><nyt_headline version="1.0" type=" ">
    Price of a Good Name? For Louvre: $520 Million
    </nyt_headline></h1>
    <nyt_byline version="1.0" type=" ">
    </nyt_byline><div class="byline">By ALAN RIDING</div>


    <nyt_text>
    </nyt_text>



    PARIS, March 6 ? What?s the price of a good name? </p>


    How about a cool $520 million?</p>


    That is the amount that Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, agreed today to pay to attach the Louvre?s
    name to a new 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 a further $747 million.</p>


    Controversy over the so-called Louvre Abu Dhabi has been swirling in
    France for the past three months, with critics charging that the French
    government is ?selling? its museums. But only now have the full details
    of the $1.267 billion package been disclosed.</p>


    For Abu Dhabi, the deal marks 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.</p>


    For France, the agreement signals a new willingness to exploit this
    country?s culture for both political and economic ends. In this case,
    it also represents something of a payback: the United Arab Emirates has
    ordered 40 Airbus 380 aircraft and has bought some $10.4 billion worth
    of armaments from France over the past decade.</p>


    The agreement was signed today in Abu Dhabi by France?s culture
    minister, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, and the president of Abu Dhabi?s
    tourism authority, Sheik Sultan bin Tahnoon al-Nahayan. Henri Loyrette,
    the president of the Louvre, was among the many senior French museum
    officials in attendance.</p>


    The Louvre Abu Dhabi, which has been 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.</p>


    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. This
    new agency is also expected to look for new international partners in
    the coming years.</p>


    Still, it was inevitable that the focus of attention should be the
    renting of the Louvre?s name. It was this that upset many French
    traditionalists, including 4,700 signatories of an online petition
    objecting to the accord. But it was also the Louvre brand that Abu
    Dhabi most coveted to add prestige to its ambitious Saadiyat Island
    plan.</p>


    ?It?s a fair fee for the concession of the name,? Mr. Loyrette told
    Agence-France Presse in Abu Dhabi. ?This tutelary role deserves reward.
    It?s normal.?</p>


    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 itself to refurbish a wing of the Pavillon de
    Flore to display international art.</p>


    This gallery, to be ready by 2010, will carry the name of Sheik
    Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan, the founder and long-time 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.</p>


    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 demanded that a
    gallery be named after them in return.</p>


    There is no question that France is profiting handsomely from this
    deal: in exchange for $247 million, it will rotate between 200 and 300
    art works through the Louvre Abu Dhabi over a 10-year period; it will
    be paid $214.5 million over 20 years for the management expertise
    provided by its new museums agency; and it will provide four temporary
    exhibitions per year for 15 years in exchange for $253.5 million.</p>


    In a telephone interview from Abu Dhabi, Mubarak Al-Muhairi, the
    deputy chairman of the emirate?s tourism authority, dismissed rumors
    that the new museum would reject loans or exhibitions from France
    including Christian religious art or depicting, say, nudity. ?In
    principle, there are no restrictions,? he said, ?but both sides will
    agree on what is shown.?</p>


    He said that the authority?s hope was that the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, which is being designed by Frank Gehry, will open by or soon after 2012, with the other parts of the cultural center to follow.</p>


    He added that while Abu Dhabi is expected to spend around $520
    million over the next decade to assemble its own art holdings, ?it is
    our intention to build the collection gradually so as not to disturb
    the market.? In this, the French museums agency is also expected to
    play an advisory role.</p>


    In a statement, Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan said the accord
    reinforced Abu Dhabi?s vision of becoming :a world-class destination
    bridging global cultures.? In a message read at today?s ceremony,
    France?s president, Jacques Chirac, said it ?sealed a partnership with the world?s most visited and well known museum.? </p>

    </p>
    Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

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  • laika
    moderator
    • Sep 2006
    • 3787

    #2
    Re: Louvre name for sale.

    Wow, so bizarre and fascinating. It is absolutely amazing what a name is worth; and what people and countries will pay to be associated with French culture. [^o)]
    ...I mean the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art whose other half is the eternal and the immutable.

    Comment

    • PrinceOfCats
      Senior Member
      • Jan 2007
      • 100

      #3
      Re: Louvre name for sale.

      Related article
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