Is the Louvre's decision to follow the Guggenheim in setting up an outpost on an island in Abu Dhabi being driven by artistic or financial imperatives, asks Angelique Chrisafis
It is one of the greatest art collections in the world, whose miles of galleries range from the treasures of antiquity to Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. But Paris's Musée du Louvre could soon become Europe's biggest cultural export by opening a vast new outpost in the Middle East as part of President Jacques Chirac's desire for greater understanding between east and west.
A French government delegation arrived in November in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates, to finalise a deal that would see France stamp its influence on the city's quest to reinvent itself as the cultural capital of the Gulf.
Already, the giant of the art collection world, the Guggenheim Foundation, has signed up to build a museum in Abu Dhabi designed by the architect Frank Gehry, to open in 2012. Now, in a race of cultural brand names, the Louvre is attempting to beat them to it, with the leading French architect Jean Nouvel tipped to create a new museum that will display works from the Louvre.
Abu Dhabi, which has more than 9 per cent of the world's oil reserves, plans to make the museums the centrepiece of a €21.5 billion cultural and financial quarter set on an island named Saadiyat, Arabic for "isle of happiness". There will be three other museums, luxury hotels and golf courses. But the government is aware that in its competition to lure tourists away from the shopping haven of Dubai, the Louvre could be the deciding factor. More than sven and a half million people trooped through its doors in Paris last year. Abu Dhabi is said to be prepared to pay Paris more than €750 million for the jewel in its cultural crown.
Delicate diplomatic negotiations to transport the Louvre to the Arab world have taken place for more than a year in Abu Dhabi and Paris, with the French daily Libération asking whether the project was the "most novel and controversial deal in the history of French cultural politics". Like the Guggenheim, French curators will not exhibit nudity or religious subjects likely to offend in the location. But some in the arts world say the deal is less to do with culture than political and economic interests, and France trying to flex its muscles on the international stage. Already, French curators are advising on the construction of an Islamic art museum in Qatar designed by IM Pei, who created the Louvre's glass pyramid.
In November last year French culture minister Gilles de Robien inaugurated a branch of the prestigious French university, the Sorbonne, in Abu Dhabi - the first time the 750-year-old centre of Paris Latin Quarter learning has been exported overseas. The Sorbonne Abu Dhabi will host 1,500 students from the United Arab Emirates and well-to-do families of other oil-rich Gulf states, who will be taught in subjects such as literature, philosophy and law, adhering to the French tradition of secular education. The Emirates will fund the project, estimated at €25-€30 million. One member of de Robien's entourage told Agence France-Presse: "The French government is proud to work on this magnificent, ambitious ." He said the Abu Dhabi versions of the Sorbonne and the Louvre "were testimony to the wish to find a dialogue between east and west".
CERTAINLY, JACQUES CHIRAC is just as keen to cement political and economic links with the Arab world as he is to reverse the tide of cultural treasures that have for the last four centuries travelled from east to west. His office at the Elysée has been crucial to negotiations and the Emirates trade links are an important factor. Among other business links, Emirates Airline has an order in for 43 of the delayed new Airbus A380s.
"My feeling is this is a project more determined by political than artistic considerations," says Philippe Régnier, editor of the French paper Le Journal des Arts. "It is about France's presence in the region and its economic concerns. This isn't a project piloted by the museum or its curators, it has been taken over by the ministry of culture."
SOME FRENCH MEDIA speculated that the Louvre's director, Henri Loyrette, was not initially taken by the project, fearing that the Louvre's name could end up becoming an international brand name, exported like prêt-à-porter clothes. The museum, which already has a partnership with the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, is also already stretched in its plans to open a regional branch in the northern Pas-de-Calais town of Lens in 2008. But the ministry of culture has now invited other museums to have a say in the project and also to send over work - including the Pompidou centre, the Musée d'Orsay, the palace of Versailles and Jacques Chirac's pet project, the museum of African and Asian art at Quai Branly.
One question that persists in Paris is whether the sum paid by Abu Dhabi will be ploughed back into the Louvre's projects at home. The museum hopes to open an Islamic art wing in 2009, which has already received €17.3 million from a Saudi billionaire, Prince Walid bin Talal. The Louvre owns 10,000 artefacts from Islamic civilisation, ranging from Spain to India, most of which is now in storage because of a lack of space.
Meanwhile, the trend of French cultural institutions expanding abroad to compete with international brands, such as the Guggenheim collections, is growing, particularly in areas of economic interest to France. The Pompidou is expected to open a branch in the Luwan district of Shanghai, designed by an architect chosen by the Chinese, an agreement promoted by President Chirac on a recent state visit to China, and Paris's Musée Rodin could soon have a branch in Sao Paolo, Brazil. - Guardian service
Petrodollars: the Emirates revolution
They were once little more than oil outposts in the desert, wealthy but remote, seven emirates bound together in a federation on the south-eastern tip of the Arabian peninsula. But the United Arab Emirates are fast reinventing themselves as a cultural and recreational hub, with tens of billions of dollars of investment transforming Abu Dhabi and Dubai in particular.
Abu Dhabi, whose "petrodollars" give it one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, is styling itself as the cultural alternative to Dubai's more ritzy holiday and retail destination.
The emirates capital plans an "upscale cultural district" on Saadiyat, with the €300 million Guggenheim museum part of a €20 billion government-funded development that will include museums, a concert hall and art galleries alongside two golf courses, hotels and an "iconic seven-star property".
The Dubai plans include indoor ski slopes, an underwater hotel, a €3 billion theme park, and the elite island development known as The World.