French culture -- it's pricey, it's exportable, and the good folks at the Ministre de la Culture et de la Communication will package it up to your tastes!

BERETS AT 10 PACES AS FRANCE
TURNS THE LOUVRE INTO A FRANCHISE

January 16, 2007 (SMH) - After months of rumours and a week of protests, the French Government has confirmed for a sum said to be as much as $US1 billion ($1.28 billion) [€771,557,000], it will rent the name, art treasures and expertise of the Louvre to a museum to be built in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. ... Critics of the plan - about 2400 signatories [currently 3,400] of a petition accusing France of "selling its soul" - have been dismissed as "grumpy spirits" [grincheux] by the Minister for Culture, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres. ... Among those who have signed are present and former directors and curators of leading museums, including the Musee de l'Orangerie, the Pompidou and even the Louvre.

Such is the power of the French Government. It owns most major French museums and, by all accounts, the President, Jacques Chirac, has concluded 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.

So France has changed direction and is heading down a path it once disdained, a path pioneered in the 1990s by the Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum in New York... Still, that the decision has shocked many in the French art world is unsurprising. For them, one appeal of government ownership of cultural institutions is that it shields the arts from commercial interests.

CLIENT TOUCH-UP
Making The Enigmatic Smile Inscrutable

FRANCE DIVIDED OVER NUDE-FREE LOUVRE IN GULF

PARIS January 21, 2007 (Guardian) - 'The museums of France have a duty to contribute to shining the light of French culture around the world,' France's Culture Minister, Donnedieu de Vabres, said last week, adding that the revenues from Abu Dhabi would be invested in French museums. President Jacques Chirac backs the project as a means of projecting French influence in a region, and in a world, dominated by 'Anglo-Saxon' values.

Opponents claim the government and the director of the Louvre are 'prostituting culture'. ... [Didier Rykner, whose Web site La Tribune de l'art is gathering protest signatures:] 'You wouldn't ask the military to rent out one of its aircraft carriers if it needed some cash.'

... Officials at the Louvre say the Abu Dhabi museum will not present works that may cause offence, but will maintain a collection representative of Western European art.

ALLO ? ALLO ? OÙ EST MON CANAL ?
École de Fontainebleau - Gabrielle d'Estrée et l'une de ses soeurs (Musée du Louvre)
(Not For Export)

And the French need not fear that this national treasure will be called on to represent French culture as the Arab gentleman prefers his culture depilated.

PFFT (What is this?): Commercial culture 3 | Doing the American model one better 4 | Rayonnement français 0

Bonjour ,

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