...prominent figures in the French art world have accused their government of exploiting art for trade and diplomacy and said the lending of art will overburden French museums. Led by the art historian and critic Didier Rykner, the opponents of the Abu Dhabi scheme collected 4,700 signatures on a petition.
"We have lost a battle, but the combat continues," Rykner wrote this week on his website "La Tribune de l'Art," paraphrasing De Gaulle's famous remark after Nazi Germany defeated France in 1940.
The French government will receive $525 million for use of the Louvre brand alone, plus a gift of $33 million to renovate a wing of the Paris Louvre, which will be named for longtime Emirates ruler Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.
The Sheik Zayed wing of the Louvre, in its Pavillion de Flore, will provide a prominent home for Islamic works of art, organizers said.
The further $750 million will be spent to bring French managers and 300 loaned works of art to fill and staff the Louvre Abu Dhabi, as well as to renovate a French palace and fund an artwork restoration center in Paris.
The cost of building Nouvel's museum design has yet to be calculated and is likely to add hundreds of US millions of dollars more to the cost, pushing the overall project close to $2 billion. Nouvel's design renderings revealed a white discus-shaped building with galleries illuminated by shafts of sunlight streaming through irregular-shaped windows in the roof.
Beyond the construction cost is the stratospheric price of buying the artworks that the Louvre Abu Dhabi will need to fill the 260,000 square foot museum once the 30-year loan period with France expires.
"We'd rather not announce our collection budget," said Mubarak al-Muhairi, director of Abu Dhabi's tourism authority. "We don't want to create a disturbance in the market."
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