This Much I Know

Sheikh Art: The Louvre’s Proud Name Mired in Oily Arabian Sands

 It it art?

That’s what many were asking when the Louvre’s pyramid was unveiled two decades ago in the grand courtyard of the world’s greatest art museum. At first, the glass pyramid was met with scorn and derision as an affront to good taste in such a grandly historic location. Over the past two decades, however, Parisians have accommodated themselves to the now-trademark glass pyramid perched in the middle of the grand Cour Napoleon — just as they, and millions of visitors, have become accustomed to the McDonald’s in the vast underground shopping concourse below the Louvre.

For high-minded critics who persist in their hardened view that the Louvre has sold out, the museum’s international branch-plant on the oil-rich Arabian sands of Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island will do little to assuage their outrage. Scheduled to be completed next year, the Abu Dhabi Louvre won’t feature a pyramid — that would be too evocative of neighbouring Egypt. It has been designed as an enormous mushroom-shaped dome, the work of celebrated French architect Jean Nouvel. 

According to news reports this week, however, Abu Dhabi’s ambitions to attract big-branded cultural institutions from the West is hitting roadblocks that French officials refuse to discuss openly. It would appear, however, that the $108-million construction of the Abu Dhabi Louvre will be delayed till 2013. Another planned museum transplant had similarly been negotiated with the Guggenheim in New York. But there are doubts about that project too. As an Associated Press report stated: “The Guggenheim and the Louvre branches are the highest profile attractions planned for Saadiyat Island. The area slated for the cultural district, now just a wind-swept desert construction site, is just a short drive from the downtown skyscrapers rapidly being built along Abu Dhabi’s Persian Gulf waterfront.” While the Louvre project for Abu Dhabi has been delayed, the Guggenheim deal seems in more serious trouble. 

One can reasonably wonder why great museums such as the Louvre and Guggenheim are scrambling to make sales pitches to Arabian petro-shiekhs to sign branch-plant deals. These countries, after all, have dubious reputations in the area of basic democratic principles. The question is even more pertinent after the Arab Spring. The United Arab Emirates is hardly a liberal democracy. It’s an absolutist monarchy. 

The explanation, not surprisingly, is money. The French government is loathe to discuss the financial details of the Abu Dhabi Louvre deal and refuses to comment on the recent construction delays. But as far as branding deals go, this one is an unbelievable cash jackpot. According to the terms of the deal reported in the New York Times, Abu Dhabi is renting the Louvre brand and art treasures for 30 years in exchange for payments totally $1.3 billion. The branding deal is worth $520 million, and another $747 million is being paid for art loans and exhibitions. As a sweetener, Abu Dhabi also agreed to pay the Louvre a “gift” of $33 million to cover the costs of renovating one of its wings in Paris.

As the New York Times noted in 2007 when the Abu Dhabi Louvre was originally announced: “France is profiting handsomely from this deal: in exchange for $247 million, it will rotate between 200 and 300 artworks through the Louvre Abu Dhabi during 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 a year for 15 years in exchange for $253.5 million.”

The headline on the New York Times article summed it up succinctly: “The Louvre’s Art: Priceless. The Louvre’s Name: Expensive”. 

The deal contained another tacit clause that was less publicized: the United Arab Emirates ordered 40 French-made Airbus 380 aircraft. That was in addition to $10.4 billion worth of armaments purchased from France. As the New York Times article put it: “For France the agreement signals a new willingness to exploit its culture for political and economic ends. In this case, it also represents something of a payback.”

The Abu Dhabi Louvre deal was criticized from the outset, notably by Parisian intellectuals who were outraged by the crass commercialism of France’s globally renowned art museum. Leading the charge was Didier Rykner, who rallied his friends and colleagues in France’s art world to sign a petition declaring: “Our museums are not for sale”. On that point, he evidently was wrong. France’s art museums are for sale — or, rather, for rent. And so is much more of France’s national heritage. In French politics, it’s called “raison d’Etat” — interests before principles. 

While the French government remains tight-lipped about details of the Abu Dhabi Louvre deal, the Louvre is not the only esteemed French institution to have hankered after petro-shiekh funds in the United Arab Emirates. France’s best-branded university, La Sorbonne, also has set up shop in the UAE. Earlier this year, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon was in the UAE to inaugurate the Sorbonne’s Abu Dhabi campus. All financing for the UAE Sorbonne was covered by the oil-rich state. Fillon spoke out against the “clash of civilization” theory in his remarks to justify the Sorbonne’s foray into the Arab world. 

A news report on the Sorbonne’s Abu Dhabi campus added this: “Fillon, who met Saudi officials in Riyadh on Saturday, moved on to Dubai for talks on France’s proposed sale of its Rafale fighter planes, which Paris has been working to export but without success to date. And Fillon visited France’s military base opened in 2009 in Abu Dhabi, located within 250 kilometres of Iran’s coastline, that he said was a sign that ‘our military adapts to strategic challenges’. More than 600 French soldiers are to be stationed at the base by end 2011.”

The INSEAD business school located outside of Paris in Fontainebleau has also gotten in on the act to fill its coffers. Like the Sorbonne, the MBA school now has a campus in Abu Dhabi. By a remarkable coincidence, the oil-rich Gulf State agreed to fund the restoration of the chateau de Fontainebleau just down the road from INSEAD. French government officials were on hand to sign that deal.  

Meanwhile the Louvre gave the public in the Emirates a peak at its art treasures — including two works by Manet — at its Abu Dhabi branch plant. French president Nicolas Sarkozy travelled to the UAE to attend the ceremony. Jean Nouvel’s spectacular mushroom-shaped Louvre hadn’t been built yet, however, so the exhibition was held in the Emirates Palace Hotel. Whether the Abu Dhabi Louvre will ever sprout its mushroom head in the desert sands remains a mystery worthy of the sphinx, just like the much-anticipated opening of the Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi. Further deails coming soon — but don’t expect much information from the French government. 

Scrutinizing the details of these complex and controversial deals, one if left with the age-old question: Is it art? The answer, to put it diplomatically, remains ambiguous. Perhaps because the beauty of a deal is in the eye of the mutual beneficiaries.