When the Louvre announced plans for a museum to bear its name in the Arab emirate of Abu Dhabi, observers outside France could be forgiven for wondering why the decision caused so much fuss.
Yes, the choice of location was questionable - a rich, tiny state of some 1.6 million people, dwarfed by the 8 million who visit the Paris museum each year. But it was only a temporary project, and would help the Louvre to fund its own restoration work.
Yet the plan raised suspicions. The idea of sticking a Louvre tag onto a project abroad resembled, uncomfortably for some, a Guggenheim-style private branding operation - something unthinkable for France, where most museums are publicly owned and staunchly public-serving.
In December, a declaration on Le Monde's comment pages by three top figures in the museum world, including the former national museums chief Françoise Cachin, branded the plan a 'diplomatic gift' that amounted to 'selling one's soul'. 'Museums are not for sale,' they thundered in the daily newspaper. 'Our objects of heritage are not consumer goods.'
According to the Art Newspaper, Cachin was last month relieved of her post from the French government's Conseil Artistique des Musées Nationaux. Michel Laclotte, a former Louvre director and fellow opponent, was also dismissed.
Details of the plan suggest that this is not to be a museum loan on traditional lines, like the Louvre's relationship with the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, nor an annexe like the one planned for Lens in northern France.
Instead, critics said, it was something mercenary and political: a contract between the two governments under which Abu Dhabi would pay France millions of euros for a long-term series of exhibitions, potentially drawing on works from all French state museums - and the right to use the Louvre brand.
The French government unveiled the plan for this 'universal' museum in March, after culture minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres returned from signing the deal in Abu Dhabi. The final price-tag was bigger than reported. The emirate is to pay France about €1bn (£679m) over 30 years. By the end, it will have to find its own name and amass its own private collection.
In the meantime it will benefit from partnerships with the Louvre and seven other major French museums, including the Musée d'Orsay, the Pompidou Centre and the museum of Versailles castle. France will supply four temporary shows a year, plus a series of two-year shows, selected by French curators.
A 2012 deadline is set for building the Louvre Abu Dhabi, a 24,000 sq metre museum to be designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel. It will be on the multibillion pound resort of Saadiyat Island, where it will neighbour four other museums, including a Guggenheim.
Abu Dhabi's payment will also help France set up a new body, an international agency for French museums, to coordinate links between museums in France and abroad to launch similar projects in the future.
For Abu Dhabi, the French museums themselves will decide whether or not to agree to loan their works, but the direct intervention of the government in forging the financial terms of the deal raised doubts - and ethical concerns - about who would benefit from this revenue.
Were national collections at risk of being wrested from the hands of curators by the government money men? Not just a museum, it seems, but French cultural policy in general was taking off in an extraordinary new direction.
La Tribune de l'Art, an online art history journal, launched a petition endorsing Cachin's statements against the project. Later, 39 curators from the Louvre itself signed another text, outlining concerns over what they saw as an unethical financial project.
'The culture ministry has as its role to protect French heritage and to enrich French museums; it's the same in all countries,' La Tribune's founder Didier Rykner told Museums Journal. 'Now they have a project to enrich a private, foreign collection. It is a scandal. It is against all the ethics, not only of museums, but of French public administration.'
Rykner alleges that 'money and diplomacy' are the true motives for the project, which he says will result in fewer works of the Louvre being available to visitors in Paris. He claims that the project differs from traditional arrangements, not only in the planned length of the loans, but the fact that the initiative appears to have come not from the museum but from political quarters. Citing Louvre insiders, he claims there are doubts about how much of the revenue from Abu Dhabi will go back to the museum.
Suspicions about the motives for the plan were compounded by a publication in December from the finance ministry. In a sweeping report on how France could better profit from its intangible assets, government advisers outlined the potential of selling 'cultural brands'.
Citing the Guggenheim in Bilbao, where the organisation lent its name to the new museum and had a hand in managing the works on show, but let the institution keep its profits, the report spoke of encouraging French museums to let their collections 'serve their brand'.
Observing that museums must rely on limited public funding or acts of private patronage to fund renovation or acquisitions, it warned: 'There is a big risk that national museums will find themselves unable to guard their prestige. The limited growth of their resources will not allow them to acquire the most reputed works or to undertake development projects necessary to the vitality of their brand.'
Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres has defended the Louvre plans and opposed the proposals in the finance ministry report. Reacting to the fierce debate over Abu Dhabi, he insisted, in a speech to curators, that the project would uphold the International Council of Museums code of ethics. According to Donnedieu de Vabres, payments from the emirate will go to French national museums to fund investment and acquisitions.
Henri Loyrette, the president of the Louvre, has denied the alleged 'commercial' motive. 'That's not what's driving the project. It's first of all a reflection of the internationalisation of museums, driven… by institutions such as the Hermitage and the British Museum,' he was quoted as saying, referring to the British Museum's tie-up with the National Museum of China in Beijing. 'The Louvre cannot be absent from this movement.'
And his museum is not the only French institution to be taking part in the trend. The Pompidou Centre has signalled plans to open an antenna in Shanghai, a move that would give the museum an opening into an important emerging art market. Also, the Rodin Museum in Paris is planning to send sculptures to a venue in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil.
Critics of the Abu Dhabi scheme class the Pompidou's plans in the same category. Rykner concedes that the Shanghai plan is 'more justifiable' than the Louvre's, given the lack of space in the Pompidou Centre, which can only display a tiny proportion of its vast
collection.
But for him, and for the authors of the Museums Are Not For Sale article in Le Monde, this masks another shortcoming. Rather than sending the collection abroad, they say, Paris should have its own, much larger, national modern art space.
It remains to be seen whether critics' fears of major treasures being snatched from French museums will be fulfilled under the government of the new president Nicolas Sarkozy. Prior to May's election, Sarkozy was careful to stress what he considered the state's primary cultural role: 'to protect heritage'.
Roland Lloyd Parry is a freelance journalist
Yes, the choice of location was questionable - a rich, tiny state of some 1.6 million people, dwarfed by the 8 million who visit the Paris museum each year. But it was only a temporary project, and would help the Louvre to fund its own restoration work.
Yet the plan raised suspicions. The idea of sticking a Louvre tag onto a project abroad resembled, uncomfortably for some, a Guggenheim-style private branding operation - something unthinkable for France, where most museums are publicly owned and staunchly public-serving.
In December, a declaration on Le Monde's comment pages by three top figures in the museum world, including the former national museums chief Françoise Cachin, branded the plan a 'diplomatic gift' that amounted to 'selling one's soul'. 'Museums are not for sale,' they thundered in the daily newspaper. 'Our objects of heritage are not consumer goods.'
According to the Art Newspaper, Cachin was last month relieved of her post from the French government's Conseil Artistique des Musées Nationaux. Michel Laclotte, a former Louvre director and fellow opponent, was also dismissed.
Details of the plan suggest that this is not to be a museum loan on traditional lines, like the Louvre's relationship with the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, nor an annexe like the one planned for Lens in northern France.
Instead, critics said, it was something mercenary and political: a contract between the two governments under which Abu Dhabi would pay France millions of euros for a long-term series of exhibitions, potentially drawing on works from all French state museums - and the right to use the Louvre brand.
The French government unveiled the plan for this 'universal' museum in March, after culture minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres returned from signing the deal in Abu Dhabi. The final price-tag was bigger than reported. The emirate is to pay France about €1bn (£679m) over 30 years. By the end, it will have to find its own name and amass its own private collection.
In the meantime it will benefit from partnerships with the Louvre and seven other major French museums, including the Musée d'Orsay, the Pompidou Centre and the museum of Versailles castle. France will supply four temporary shows a year, plus a series of two-year shows, selected by French curators.
A 2012 deadline is set for building the Louvre Abu Dhabi, a 24,000 sq metre museum to be designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel. It will be on the multibillion pound resort of Saadiyat Island, where it will neighbour four other museums, including a Guggenheim.
Abu Dhabi's payment will also help France set up a new body, an international agency for French museums, to coordinate links between museums in France and abroad to launch similar projects in the future.
For Abu Dhabi, the French museums themselves will decide whether or not to agree to loan their works, but the direct intervention of the government in forging the financial terms of the deal raised doubts - and ethical concerns - about who would benefit from this revenue.
Were national collections at risk of being wrested from the hands of curators by the government money men? Not just a museum, it seems, but French cultural policy in general was taking off in an extraordinary new direction.
La Tribune de l'Art, an online art history journal, launched a petition endorsing Cachin's statements against the project. Later, 39 curators from the Louvre itself signed another text, outlining concerns over what they saw as an unethical financial project.
'The culture ministry has as its role to protect French heritage and to enrich French museums; it's the same in all countries,' La Tribune's founder Didier Rykner told Museums Journal. 'Now they have a project to enrich a private, foreign collection. It is a scandal. It is against all the ethics, not only of museums, but of French public administration.'
Rykner alleges that 'money and diplomacy' are the true motives for the project, which he says will result in fewer works of the Louvre being available to visitors in Paris. He claims that the project differs from traditional arrangements, not only in the planned length of the loans, but the fact that the initiative appears to have come not from the museum but from political quarters. Citing Louvre insiders, he claims there are doubts about how much of the revenue from Abu Dhabi will go back to the museum.
Suspicions about the motives for the plan were compounded by a publication in December from the finance ministry. In a sweeping report on how France could better profit from its intangible assets, government advisers outlined the potential of selling 'cultural brands'.
Citing the Guggenheim in Bilbao, where the organisation lent its name to the new museum and had a hand in managing the works on show, but let the institution keep its profits, the report spoke of encouraging French museums to let their collections 'serve their brand'.
Observing that museums must rely on limited public funding or acts of private patronage to fund renovation or acquisitions, it warned: 'There is a big risk that national museums will find themselves unable to guard their prestige. The limited growth of their resources will not allow them to acquire the most reputed works or to undertake development projects necessary to the vitality of their brand.'
Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres has defended the Louvre plans and opposed the proposals in the finance ministry report. Reacting to the fierce debate over Abu Dhabi, he insisted, in a speech to curators, that the project would uphold the International Council of Museums code of ethics. According to Donnedieu de Vabres, payments from the emirate will go to French national museums to fund investment and acquisitions.
Henri Loyrette, the president of the Louvre, has denied the alleged 'commercial' motive. 'That's not what's driving the project. It's first of all a reflection of the internationalisation of museums, driven… by institutions such as the Hermitage and the British Museum,' he was quoted as saying, referring to the British Museum's tie-up with the National Museum of China in Beijing. 'The Louvre cannot be absent from this movement.'
And his museum is not the only French institution to be taking part in the trend. The Pompidou Centre has signalled plans to open an antenna in Shanghai, a move that would give the museum an opening into an important emerging art market. Also, the Rodin Museum in Paris is planning to send sculptures to a venue in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil.
Critics of the Abu Dhabi scheme class the Pompidou's plans in the same category. Rykner concedes that the Shanghai plan is 'more justifiable' than the Louvre's, given the lack of space in the Pompidou Centre, which can only display a tiny proportion of its vast
collection.
But for him, and for the authors of the Museums Are Not For Sale article in Le Monde, this masks another shortcoming. Rather than sending the collection abroad, they say, Paris should have its own, much larger, national modern art space.
It remains to be seen whether critics' fears of major treasures being snatched from French museums will be fulfilled under the government of the new president Nicolas Sarkozy. Prior to May's election, Sarkozy was careful to stress what he considered the state's primary cultural role: 'to protect heritage'.
Roland Lloyd Parry is a freelance journalist
