The Louvre Abu Dhabi: French Universalism, Exported Seth Graebner

L'Esprit Créateur, Volume 54, Number 2, Summer 2014, pp. 186-199 (Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/esp.2014.0019

For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/550292

Access provided at 7 Jan 2020 20:10 GMT from Washington University @ St. Louis The Louvre Abu Dhabi: French Universalism, Exported

Seth Graebner

RANCE ARGUABLY HAS MORE PEOPLE than most other countries thinking actively about the export of “culture,” whether conceived Fas artistic production or as national norms of thought and meaning. This development is not recent: questions about the need for (and the means and ends of) cultural exportation have arisen regularly at least since the Rev- olution. When the destination countries have been situated outside Europe, the discussion, often colored by colonialist discourse, has generally viewed the culture for export as “universal” as well as French. The Louvre as a monument of French culture and a museum for the world has for two hundred years stood among the main symbols of the preeminence of France in the production and curation of the Western European traditions of art called, until recently, universal. Though the eighteenth-century founders of the Louvre Museum invented neither the concept of “high art” nor the notion of France’s universal mission in the world, France’s most famous art museum has clearly become part of the cultural and political construction known paradoxically as “French universalism.”1 Scholars have traced the history of the Louvre as building, as art collection, as public institution, and as symbol. This article will analyze an episode of its twenty-first-century life in which a set of actors ranging from art historians and curators to government ministers and journalists have both articulated wholly new purposes for the Louvre and defended venerable conceptions of its historic role. That the Persian Gulf will support the first museum outside France to carry the Louvre name demonstrates the continued salience of universalism in both French and Arab thinking, and pro- vides an opportunity to question its premises and its future. Most readers of the 13 December 2006 issue of Le Monde would have known no context of events in which to place the “tribune” of the day, a polemic signed by the former curators Françoise Cachin and Jean Clair and the art historian Roland Recht, figures mostly unknown outside the artistic and museum professions, and bearing the title “Les musées ne sont pas à vendre.”2 Some readers perhaps remembered that two months earlier the paper had reported that a delegation of officials from the United Arab Emi- rates had expressed their interest the previous summer in constructing a museum in partnership with the Louvre.3 After several months of silence, the

© L’Esprit Créateur, Vol. 54, No. 2 (2014), pp. 186–199 SETH GRAEBNER issue returned noisily to the press in mid-December of that year. The authors of the op-ed declared their vehement opposition not only to any partnership with a museum to be created in the Emirates, but also to the principle of remuneration from the Emiratis to the Louvre for pieces lent under the partnership, and especially for such schemes involving the transport of well- known works outside France for significant periods. Their objections addressed the plan involving Abu Dhabi, as well as an existing program of loans to the High Museum in Atlanta (“la riche cité du Coca-Cola,” as the authors called it), host of a three-year series of exhibitions of works from the Louvre, including major works by Raphael, Rembrandt, Titian, Velázquez, and Vermeer; most notably for the editorialists, Raphael’s Portrait of Baldas- sare Castiglione had left France for the first time since its acquisition by the Louvre.4 They protested (slightly too much) that “Nous ne méprisons ni l’ar- gent, ni le mécénat, ni l’Amérique, comme l’on risque très rapidement de nous en accuser. Mais tout cela peut nous entraîner dans une déviance que nul ne pourra bientôt plus limiter. Sur le plan moral, l’utilisation commer- ciale et médiatique des chefs-d’œuvre du patrimoine national, fondements de l’histoire de notre culture et que la République se doit de montrer et de pré- server pour les générations futures, ne peut que choquer” (Cachin, Clair, and Recht). For Cachin, Clair, and Recht, the Louvre housed and indeed embod- ied a version of French culture that the Republic must protect. The Louvre, in a contemporary interpretation of its Revolutionary-era foundation as a national museum, has become associated with the republican value of high culture for all (on certain centralizing and assimilationist terms) in a way inconceivable for any rival museum or tourist attraction. In keeping with the traditions of republican political agitation in the voluntarist state, those opposed to museums profiting from their loans gathered to protest, albeit online rather than in the street. Eventually some 5,100 people from a variety of countries (though few if any from the Emirates) made their way to a web site edited by Didier Rykner of the Tribune de l’art in order to petition the government to stop such museum deals in the future generally, and the one then contemplated with Abu Dhabi specifically. Not all commentators agreed with the opposition to what officials soon baptized the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Several prominent figures endorsed the plan, including the socialist legislator and former Minister of Culture Jack Lang, the director of the Louvre Henri Loyrette, and the director of the government agency Musées de France. Apart from Libération, the press generally took a favorable (Le Monde) or even enthusiastic (Le Figaro) view. An op-ed author writing in early 2007 called the opposition and resulting dialogue de sourds

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“bien franchouillard,” and said that given the advantages of the proposed exchange, “franchement […] il faut être Français pour trouver à redire.”5 Once the members of the Senate had mandated the establishment of a code of ethics (a charte déontologique) for paid museum loans, it might have seemed to observers both French and foreign that any further controversy was indeed a typically French tempest in a teacup.6 Yet the eventual creation of a code of ethics did not quiet the protesters, who continued to fight the Louvre Abu Dhabi project up to and beyond the signature of the agreements and the Emi- ratis’ payment of the first fees to the Louvre, an installment of fifty million euros in March and April 2007. In order both to understand the protesters’ objections, and to see what is at stake when the French consider the role of the Louvre in the era of globalization of cultural consumption, this article will first briefly present the scope and form of the Louvre Abu Dhabi project, and then analyze the rhetoric of both proponents and protesters.

The project In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Emirate of Abu Dhabi found itself somewhat overshadowed by the dramatic economic development occurring in its neighbor, the formerly sleepy Dubai. There a forest of skyscrapers was springing up as fast as observers could write about it, supported by the city’s growing importance as the financial center of the Middle East and the broader Islamic world, and as investors know now, a large dose of pure speculation (to say nothing of cheap and exploitable labor from Asia). Sheik Khalifa Ben Zayed Al-Nahyan, Emir of Abu Dhabi and President of the UAE Federation, appears to have envisioned a different role for Abu Dhabi, largest and richest of the five emirates. While little of his decision-making process has become public, by about 2004 scholars around the world began to notice the begin- nings of a major (indeed, record-breaking) program of investments in cultural projects of regional and global ambition. First came the establishment of new campuses by Yale University, New York University, and the Sorbonne, designed to grant diplomas of equal standing to those of the respective home institutions. Then the government of Abu Dhabi, acting through the parastatal Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority and its real estate developer, the Tourism Development and Investment Company, announced a plan to convert a barrier island of sand and mangroves near the city into the Emirate’s “cultural district,” at costs estimated around 25 billion euros. Saadiyat (Happiness) Island would include several “world-class” museums and performance halls designed by famous architects, a biennale park, national and maritime museums, as well as pleasure boat marinas, several dozen luxury hotels, a golf

188 SUMMER 2014 SETH GRAEBNER course, and vacation villas and condominiums to house 150,000 people.7 Along with the “inévitable Guggenheim,” the Louvre was one of the first institutions the Emiratis contacted in their effort to find partners for the Saadiyat Island project, as early as June 2005 (Cachin, Clair, and Recht). The delegation sent to Paris, as Le Monde reported a year after the fact, “envi- sage[ait] d’acquérir la ‘marque’ Louvre et des prestations fournies par les musées français […]. À l’époque, le Louvre ne se montre pas très chaud pour participer à une telle opération” (Follorou and de Roux). Several delegations later, however, the museum changed its mind: as the language of Le Monde suggested, it became possible by the fall of 2006 to talk about the Louvre as a multifaceted brand, which implied the development of two relatively new ideas in relation to the building, the institution, and their contents. First, these writers viewed the Louvre as a name with world-wide cachet for loan, sale or purchase. Second, they thought of the objects the museum held as commer- cially exploitable. This last idea seems to have outraged Rykner the most, perhaps not surprisingly since he had founded the Tribune de l’art in 2003 with the express purpose of denouncing mismanagement of the patrimoine national.8 At the same time, the Villepin government made public its commit- ment to the idea of a French-conceived “musée universel” in Abu Dhabi, and the Prime Minister gave Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, then Minister of Cul- ture, a “mission opérationnelle pour le rayonnement de nos musées” (Follorou and de Roux). The language reflected the proposed participation of several museums in addition to the Louvre (Pompidou, Orsay, and Quai Branly), and it took up the preexisting rhetoric of France’s cultural and political role on the global stage. Politicians, journalists, and other public figures from all parts of the political spectrum have adopted Gaullist phrases about “le rayonnement de la France,” replacing the largely discredited colonial mission civilisatrice, but with only a slight net reduction in the condescension implied toward its recipients. By the end of January 2007, negotiations had produced an agreement between the two governments and their respective agencies, although not all the numbers would become public until a French delegation that included the Minister of Culture went to Abu Dhabi to sign the contract on March 6, 2007. The contract specified a term of thirty years, during which the new museum would will use the name “Louvre,” licensed to it for the sum of 400 million euros. (The Guggenheim name, for an identical term, apparently brought only 76 million euros on the Gulf market.9) The museum, with an opening then planned for 2012 (and later announced for 2015), would be a “musée universel présentant des objets majeurs dans les domaines de l’archéologie, des

VOL. 54, NO. 2 189 L’ESPRIT CRÉATEUR beaux-arts et des arts décoratifs, ouvert à toutes les périodes, y compris le contemporain, à toutes les aires géographiques et tous les domaines de l’histoire de l’art, répondant aux critères de qualité et à l’ambition scientifique et muséographique du Musée du Louvre et destiné à œuvrer au dialogue entre l’Orient et l’Occident.”10 As the rest of the contract spelled out, France and its museums agreed to provide two major services: first, the loan of works of art, and second, assistance in management and development of the museum in the Emirates. For the first, Abu Dhabi would pay 150 million euros, and for the second, 70 million. The two modes of loan specified had clear time limits, which does not seem to have reassured the project’s opponents: France would furnish four temporary exhibitions per year for ten years, with loans from two to four months. It would also provide a certain number of pieces (300 in the first two years and fewer thereafter) for periods of three months to two years, for the new museum’s principal collection; these loans would cease altogether after ten years. By this time, the contracting parties could hope, the Louvre Abu Dhabi would possess a substantial permanent collection of its own, as it proposed to spend 40 million euros per year on acquisitions advised by French experts whom the Emiratis would hire directly, perhaps addressing protesters’ objections about conflicts of interest.11 Later accounts gave the total sum for the Louvre and the other French museums willing to participate as 850 million euros over the thirty years of the contract, with the majority seemingly in the first decade (Madelaine). Of this sum, the Emiratis paid nearly half for the “Louvre” name alone. The French government agreed that the totality of the sum would remain in the budget of the Direction des Musées de France (a part of the Ministry of Culture renamed the “Service des Musées de France” in 2009), and that it would be neither taxed nor deducted from future government funding allocated to the museums involved.12 Since the accords, press coverage has routinely mentioned the figure of 400 million euros as the endowment the Louvre itself will retain from the deal. The architectural and monumental implications of the agreement also caused considerable comment, as much in the Persian Gulf as in France. The authorities in Abu Dhabi announced the selection of Jean Nouvel to design the facility to house their musée universel. The architect of the Institut du Monde Arabe and the Musée des Arts Premiers on the Quai Branly therefore joined an Abu Dhabi ensemble already including Frank Gehry (with his latest Guggenheim), Zaha Hadid (for the performing arts center), and Tadao Ando (for the maritime museum). With this project Nouvel also joined Claude Per- rault and several centuries of earlier colleagues in the ranks of those who have drawn plans for the Louvre. Nouvel’s building will cost $108 million and

190 SUMMER 2014 SETH GRAEBNER enclose 24,000 square meters, remaining noticeably smaller than Gehry’s, planned as the largest Guggenheim in the world at 32,000 square meters.13 Nouvel’s concept, in a model displayed in 2007 at the Emirates Palace Hotel, provoked the Emirates-based review Gulf Construction to speak of a “seemingly floating dome structure,” 200 meters wide; “its web-patterned dome allows the sun to filter through, reminiscent of rays passing through date palm fronds in an oasis […] in the best tradition of great Arabian architecture.”14 Employing a French architect to build a major monument in some sort of Arab style would seem to follow a long Orientalist tradition of French architects designing buildings both temporary (for Paris exhibitions) and permanent (mostly in the North African colonies) in what they saw as Arab styles.15 Yet even a vigorously anti-Orientalist critic would have to admit that Nouvel’s design offers far more originality than the derivative nineteenth-century exhibition pavillions, and far less silliness than the pastiches of the arabisance school in colonial Algiers or Tunis. Moreover, the commentary in a Gulf- based journal suggests that at this historical distance from the Umayyads, Abbasids, and Fatimids, the dynasties that built some of the most famous domes in the Muslim world, Europeans are not the only ones to stereotype “Arab” architecture. Another commentator, however, described the overall form of the project as an “immense champignon,” leaving unasked the question of what could be more French (or less Arab) than a mushroom.16 In the domestic statements of the French government, the selection of Nouvel became a selling point for the project, confirming France’s prowess in international cultural competition. The genius of France, went the subtext, extends to adding a French signature to architecture with regional references. The Louvre Abu Dhabi agreement included, finally, several ancillary projects. First, museum officials proposed, and received funding from the Emi- ratis to build, a new “multipurpose art research center” in France, intended as the largest in the world, and carrying the name of the Emirate.17 Second, the agreement brought with it major donations from Sheikh Khalifa outside the terms of the contract, appropriately enough to renovate parts of two of France’s noted royal and imperial palaces. The sheikh promised 5 million euros for the restoration of the Second-Empire-era theater in the Château de Fontainebleau, to be named after him. He also pledged 25 million euros for remodeling the Pavillon de Flore at the (Paris) Louvre as gallery space com- memorating his father, the late UAE President Sheikh Zayad bin Sultan Al- Nahyan.18 If the Louvre Abu Dhabi agreement inserts Jean Nouvel and his discrete Arab references into the history of the Louvre’s architecture, it also inserts the Al-Nahyan family into the history of French royal palaces.

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Foundations of the debate Debates around the Louvre Abu Dhabi consistently demonstrated that universalism, so often denounced in the past thirty years as the grandiose pretension of what we might better call Enlightenment humanism, is alive and well in France. Judith Ezekiel has noted the emergence in the last twenty years in France of “an apparent near-consensus around a resuscitated national identity and model for humanity: that of la France laïque et républicaine, the universalist, secular, republican France,” which “despite its universalist pretensions […] is a nationalized, even nationalistic model that ‘others’ ethnic, racial, and religious minorities, as well as those who quite simply deny its ‘universal- ity.’”19 In public debate over the Louvre’s expansion to Abu Dhabi, proponents and opposition agreed implicitly on the premises, differing only in the application of the identical universalist principles they called upon in justify- ing their mutually exclusive positions. The quasi-religious fervor of belief in universalism on all sides should not surprise us: Naomi Schor has noted the roots of French universalism in the Gallican Church, pointing out that “the history of universalism in France is then a history of the transvaluation of a fundamental religious belief into the prime means of desacralizing society” (Schor 44). French universalism has become a sufficiently self-evident article of faith to appear undebatable in the popular press. Philosophers have pointed out that debates in ethics are rarely debates about actual values: participants generally agree about the value itself and differ mostly on its application or meaning in a particular context.20 In this case, opposing commentators agreed that universalism constitutes a particularly French value, contradictory though this seems: universalism, they all implied, is French not only because it also belongs to everyone in the world, but more important because French culture, as exemplified by the universal museum of the Louvre, is uniquely able to transmit the universalist message to others. Far from implying that universalism simply is not universal, a sentence like “l’universalisme est bien français” would appear entirely self-consistent and meaningful in this context, and it would constitute a source of self- declared pride for those likely to say such things. In this way, French universalism shares something with American exceptionalism and may have similar appeal in moments of self-doubt. Schor speaks of a “‘spectral Universalism,’ the shadow of a formerly vigorous and dynamic ideology that once functioned as a powerful force that ensured social cohesion, now reduced to an empty rhetoric in whose cozy and familiar terms present-day ideological battles are fought” (Schor 48). The debate about the Louvre Abu Dhabi insisted upon the Frenchness of universalism at a moment when proponents of the idea (on both

192 SUMMER 2014 SETH GRAEBNER sides of the debate) seemed almost to fear its collapse at home even as they exported it abroad. Opponents of the project did not care much about such logical contradic- tions. They made several major objections, both ethical and practical. In the realm of ethics, they (Clair, Cachin, Recht, and Rykner) denounced the principle of making money with cultural goods, and especially with those belong- ing to the state. They sounded both disdainful and censorious of anything that might approach renting out works of art, and they insisted that curatorial and art historical values alone should determine how and where museums show their collections. They were careful to exempt from their condemnation the long-standing practice of loan fees, denouncing specifically the sort of arrangement by which Atlanta’s High Museum paid $6.4 million to restore the Louvre’s decorative arts galleries as part of the $18 million deal. In addition to the crass commercialism they saw in deals like the Louvre’s in Atlanta or Abu Dhabi, they also perceived a potential threat to the principle, framed in law, of the “inalienability of the national collections.” By law, any work of art, once acquired by a French national museum, remains state property forever; here, the objectors seemed to assert that even renting works to other institutions (something the Louvre denied it would ever do) would constitute “alien- ating” them. Objectors also raised practical concerns, not all as transparently ridiculous as the assertion that since the Gulf states were allegedly prone to terrorist attack, art works sent there would run greater risks than if they sat inside a major monument in Paris. (It does not seem obvious that the danger from terrorism to the Paris Louvre should be markedly less than that present in Abu Dhabi.) Among the more credible objections came the assertion that all transport of art runs the risk of loss or damage, and that the proposed expa- triation of works would deprive visitors to the Louvre (in Paris, though the objectors tended not to specify the city) of the chance to see them (Cachin, Clair, and Recht). When proponents of the project rather glibly used the old argument about the unseen treasures that supposedly fill the Louvre’s cellars, a rebuttal from a former high-ranking curator probably did little to put this argument to rest in public debate.21 The awkward fact remains that given the sums the Emiratis have paid, they seem unlikely to limit their aspirations to loans of second-rank items, even if they apparently did not object when several French authorities speaking in favor of the deal announced that certain works would be excluded from consideration for loan: they generally mentioned Géricault’s Le radeau de la Méduse and Delacroix’s La Liberté guidant le peuple as off the negotiating table. Following a loan to Japan in 1999 mandated by Jacques Chirac, Delacroix’s oversized canvas came back damaged;

VOL. 54, NO. 2 193 L’ESPRIT CRÉATEUR it also suffered vandalism at the Louvre Lens late in 2013, and conservators have successfully opposed its inclusion in a diplomatically-motivated selection of works to lend to China for the fiftieth anniversary of France’s recog- nition of the People’s Republic.22 It is hard to imagine a work more likely to inspire a French universalist than La Liberté guidant le peuple, and the embargo on its foreign travel would appear to restrict the consumption of this particular exemplar of universalism to France. In this case at least, the recent political drive to associate French universalism with cultural dialogue conflicts directly with the Louvre’s mission to preserve the patrimony on which proponents base the universalist message: two different historical moments of the development of the universalist ideal are at odds. The talk coming from both supporters and detractors of the project articulated a far-reaching understanding of the place of the Louvre in the French national consciousness, and of its role in the most French of cultural projects, “le rayonnement de la France dans le monde.”23 Already in the very first article about the Abu Dhabi project in the Parisian press, Le Monde claimed to detect a particularly French flavor in the Emirati plans, then still mostly rumored: “Au départ les responsables d’Abou Dhabi, conseillés par les Américains et notamment par Thomas Krens, du Guggenheim de New York, envisageaient la construction de plusieurs édifices, chacun dévolu à un secteur culturel très tranché […]. Avant l’été, sans doute sous l’influence de leurs dis- cussions avec les Français, les Emiratis refléchissaient aussi à un musée à caractère ‘universel’” (Follorou and de Roux). Readers might have noticed that the journalists cite no sources here for what a strict editor would call speculation about the thinking in Abu Dhabi. They might have noticed, that is, if the statements had contained anything not already accepted as axiomatic in French people’s thinking about their own culture (and as self-evident to them as the most un-universalist “particularisme” allegedly prevalent in American thinking). Even once the project became controversial, which it had not yet at the time of this article, no one debated the provenance of universalist impulses in museum curation, or in any other branch of cultural dissemination. All participants accepted that such ideas would logically come predominantly from France. The provenance of this ideal, paradoxically, seems quite particular, as if France alone were truly universal. The practical effect of this universalist tone in promotion on the imple- mentation of the Louvre Abu Dhabi agreement is not obvious. Yet while we have no reason to assume that the new museum will ultimately show the influence of an article in Le Monde a few years previous, the language emphasiz- ing the exchange of a putatively universal culture persists in the official pro-

194 SUMMER 2014 SETH GRAEBNER nouncements promoting the agreement and the new museum, from both politicians and professional curators. This persistence suggests at least that the Louvre could lend to its Abu Dhabi licensee objects other than European paintings, thereby complying with the letter and spirit of the agreement while less obviously depriving the Paris museum of any significant quantity of the European works that critics of the project most often call irreplaceable. The 2009 exhibit at the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi of eleven pieces held in French museums included two African objects (a stool and headrest), an Egyptian lamp, and a Chinese court costume, but all the rest of the objects were “western”: an Athenian vase, a Renaissance painting and vessel, and works by Manet, Cézanne, Mondrian, and Struth.24 It seems nonetheless unlikely that the Emiratis will allow the Louvre’s loans to their “musée universel” to consist mostly of, say, South Asian or Meso-American pieces, or that French curators would ever try to persuade them to do so. In 2014 more questions remain than answers regarding the establishment of the collection (permanent and lent) of the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Of 162 purchases exhibited in Paris in 2013, 46 were works produced in France, and another 58 European (including paintings by Ingres, Manet, Gauguin, Caille- botte, and Picasso).25 With one of Cézanne’s famous card players going to Qatar in 2012, it appears that in the Persian Gulf at least, “universal” culture in the form of high-profile art purchases still favors French post-impressionists.26 The Emirati vision of a universal museum nonetheless may differ significantly from its French model in its display practices, according to Mubarak Hamad Al Muhairi, an executive of the museum’s supervising agency in the Emirates: “Le Louvre Abu Dhabi exposera, en fonction des affinités, des œuvres d’arts issues de différentes civilisations: les arts, les manuscrits et les objets chargés d’un intérêt historique, culturel ou sociologique seront montrés ensemble et selon une sorte de chronologie globale. Ce dialogue implicite entre les objets exposés permettra au visiteur de découvrir les influences mutuelles et les liens qui existent entre les cultures du monde entier, lui offrant un accès nouveau à l’histoire de l’expression artistique humaine.”27 While the arrangement of the 2013 exhibit catalog demonstrates the persistence of some rather traditional groupings of artworks, it at least suggests an effort to juxtapose broadly similar objects, occasionally with no more than thematic or conceptual connections, from very different areas of production in ways that the Louvre in Paris typically does not. One section of the exhibition grouped Minoan and Greek pot- tery with a Chinese wine bottle from the Warring Kingdoms period and a vase from Roman-period Egypt, productions spanning thousands of miles and probably 1,500 years (Des Cars, 52-59). Emirati universalism might very well lead

VOL. 54, NO. 2 195 L’ESPRIT CRÉATEUR to an aesthetic experience for museum visitors rather different from that of the Paris Louvre. In addition to these diverse objects, the Louvre Abu Dhabi purchase of a number of Arabo-Islamic objects, as well as several early photographic works with Arab or Middle Eastern content, suggest a further difference in emphasis from the Paris Louvre. These works include Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey’s 1843 daguerreotype Ayoucha, perhaps the first photographic representations of a veiled woman, and Roger Fenton’s Pasha and Bedouin (1858), posed in a studio according to the conventions of orientalist photos with both artistic and ethnographic pretensions.28 French universalism has always involved the documentation of cultural difference, often in order to deny or eliminate it. What these photographic acquisitions mean for the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s vision of universalism will probably depend on their eventual context in the collection and on the means of its display. Meanwhile the emphasis on French painting continues unabated: a widely-circulated photo of a 2013 visit to Abu Dhabi by the Minister of Culture Aurélie Filipetti shows her speaking with Emiratis in front of two nineteenth-century French paintings, including Manet’s Le Bohémien.29 As a practical matter, French painting continues to be the mainstay and public vision of universalism, even once exported from France. Three last points deserve our attention in three different domains, all universal: weather, ethics, and philosophy. First, weather. Parisians have worried for decades about the possibility of the Seine flooding parts of the Louvre and Orsay museums, and the new museum in the Persian Gulf would seem to have its own risks. Saadiyat is a barrier island, exposed to the generally placid waters of the Gulf. In the course of common winter winds, the sea level on the southern side of the Gulf can rise thirty centimeters, and stay that high for hours or days.30 Cyclones have historically almost never reached the Gulf, but other sorts of severe weather do, and one might wonder whether anyone should store art on a sand bar. Second, ethics. It is relatively easy to resolve the ethical problems cited by most French opponents of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, simply by making the acquisitions committee employees of the Gulf state rather than of the French. It will prove much more difficult to infuse universalist thinking with truly universal ethical standards in the Persian Gulf. Bringing high culture to all should not mean building a “musée universel” with Asian immigrants working for very low wages, with no legal minima of decent treatment. In 2011 a number of contemporary artists and curators petitioned the Guggenheim not to build under these conditions, and more recently activists staged a protest in the museum in New York.31 In March 2012, a Human Rights Watch report singled

196 SUMMER 2014 SETH GRAEBNER out the Louvre in particular for lack of transparency in its statements and deal- ings regarding Abu Dhabi.32 Third, philosophy. It seems that at some point in the next ten to thirty years, the Emiratis will have their museum more or less filled. Assuming they mean everything they say about their wish for a universal museum, however understood, the resources at their disposal suggest that they will succeed somehow in creating it. If the Louvre Abu Dhabi actually becomes a universal museum, surely then we will have to say that universalism will have become slightly less French. As a worldwide institution, the Louvre may have become more universal.

Washington University in St. Louis

Notes

1. Naomi Schor dissects the apparent oxymoron of the term in the opening paragraphs of “The Crisis of French Universalism,” Yale French Studies, 100 (2001): 43-64. 2. Françoise Cachin, Jean Clair, and Roland Recht, “Les musées ne sont pas à vendre,” Le Monde (Dec. 13, 2006), 25. The relatively rare scholarly articles on the Louvre Abu Dhabi project include Seth Thompson, “Globalization, Economics and Museums: Saadiyat Island’s Cultural District in Abu Dhabi, UAE,” International Journal of the Arts in Society, 3:3 (2008): 21-26, http://z.umn.edu/l1j. 3. Jacques Follorou and Emmanuel de Roux, “Des musées pour les émirs,” Le Monde (Sept. 8, 2006), 3. 4. Brenda Goodman, “The Louvre views its art in a new way (when showing it in Atlanta),” The New York Times (Oct. 16, 2006), E3. Louis XIV purchased the Raphael painting from Mazarin’s heirs. 5. Benoît Meyronin, “Le Louvre à Abou Dhabi: tant mieux!” La Tribune (Feb. 21, 2007), 27. 6. See “Musées: feu vert du Sénat pour le Louvre à Abou Dhabi,” Le Monde (Jan. 27, 2007), 28; Georgina Adam, “Abu Dhabi to spend over $480m building a national collection,” The Art Newspaper, 16:179 (April 4, 2007): 1. 7. “Louvre Abu Dhabi to be created within the Saadiyat Island cultural district,” Middle East and North Africa Business Report (Amman, Jordan) (March 6, 2007). 8. ”Parfois même, ce sont des institutions censées conserver le patrimoine qui détruisent celui- ci. Nous n’hésiterons pas à dénoncer ces atteintes inadmissibles” (Didier Rykner, “Qu’est- ce que La Tribune de l’art ?” [2003, rev. October 2012], http://z.umn.edu/l1k [retrieved 11/2012]). 9. Nicolas Madelaine, “Le mini-Louvre d’Abou Dhabi: un contrat de 1 milliard d’euros,” Les Échos 19871 (March 6, 2007): 30. 10. Jacques Follorou, “Le contrat Abou Dhabi,” Le Monde (Jan. 11, 2007), 24. In September 2012, the website for the new museum operated by the TDIC announced a planned opening date of 2015 (Tourism and Development Investment Corporation, “Overview,” http://z.umn.edu/l1l (retrieved 9/2012). 11. Follorou, “Le contrat Abou Dhabi”; Emmanuel de Roux, “Entretien avec Henri Loyrette, Président du Louvre,” Le Monde (Jan. 9, 2007), 26. 12. “Ultimes négociations sur le ‘Louvre’ d’Abou Dhabi,” Le Monde, (Jan. 11, 2007), 1; Follo- rou, “Le contrat Abou Dhabi.” 13. Grégoire Allix, “Les musées d’Abou Dhabi prennent figure,” Le Monde (Feb. 2, 2007), 27. 14. “Haute Culture,” Gulf Construction, 28:8 (July 24, 2007), http://z.umn.edu/lx4 (retrieved 10/2010).

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15. Regarding the former, see Zeynep Çelik, Displaying the Orient: Architecture of Islam at Nineteenth-Century World’s Fairs (Berkeley: U of California P, 1992); to the latter, François Béguin, Arabisances: Décor architectural et tracé urbain en Afrique du Nord 1830–1950 (Paris: Dunod/Bordas, 1983) remains a useful visual introduction. 16. L. Agache, “Abou Dhabi, une chance pour la France,” Connaissance des arts, 648 (April 2007): 12. 17. “Louvre Abu Dhabi to be created within the Saadiyat Island cultural district.” 18. “Louvre Abu Dhabi to be created within the Saadiyat Island cultural district”; Clarisse Fabre, “Musées: le projet est dénoncé par des conservateurs et des syndicats; L’agence char- gée de piloter le Louvre-Abou Dhabi est prête,” Le Monde (May 5, 2007), 27. 19. Judith Ezekiel, “French Dressing: Race, Gender, and the Hijab Story,” Feminist Studies, 32:2 (2006): 257. 20. See Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), especially chapters three and four, for an argument along these lines. 21. Michel Laclotte, “Prétendre que nos musées regorgent d’œuvres non-exposées est une idée reçue. Un Louvre à Abou Dhabi, ce n’est pas si simple,” Libération (Jan. 29, 2007). 22. Isabelle Regnier, “‘La Liberté guidant le peuple’ n’ira finalement pas en Chine,” LeMonde.fr, 3 January 2014, http://z.umn.edu/l1m (retrieved 2/2014). 23. A. H., “Atlanta, Abou Dhabi, Lens... Le rayonnement du Louvre,” Le Figaro (Jan. 6, 2007), 26. 24. “Louvre Abu Dhabi purchasing policy revealed,” The Art Newspaper, 28 May 2009, http://z.umn.edu/l1n (retrieved 2/2014). 25. Data compiled from Laurence Des Cars, ed., Louvre Abu Dhabi: Naissance d’un musée (Abu Dhabi and Paris: Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority, Louvre éditions, Skira Flammarion, 2013). France was also the biggest single market in which the new museum made its acquisitions; the catalog lists 49 purchases on the French market and another 67 made elsewhere in Europe. 26. Andy Sambridge, “Louvre Abu Dhabi collection details emerge,” Arabian Business, 14 September 2012, http://z.umn.edu/m3g; Andy Sambridge, “Qatar royals buy Cézanne painting for $250M,” Arabian Business, 5 February 2012, http://z.umn.edu/m3h (retrieved 2/2014). 27. Mubarak Hamad Al Muhairi, “Un pont vers le monde,” in Louvre Abu Dhabi: Naissance d’un musée, Laurence Des Cars, ed. (Abu Dhabi and Paris: Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority, Louvre éditions, Skira Flammarion, 2013), 15. 28. On these acquisitions, see Gareth Harris, “Louvre Abu Dhabi acquires its first photographic works,” The Art Newspaper (Sept., 14, 2012), http://z.umn.edu/l1q (retrieved 2/2014). Girault de Prangey (1804-1892) was a rich businessman who learned daguerreotypy before embarking on a trip around the Mediterranean, creating images of cities, monuments, and people. He never exhibited his work, leaving them for discovery well after his death, and publication only around 2000 (“Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey,” The J. Paul Getty Museum, http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artMakerDetails?maker=20205 [retrieved 3/2014]). Several royal collectors in the Persian Gulf have acquired his works since then. Roger Fenton (1819-1869) was a British lawyer, painter, and photographer best known for the first large-scale photographic documentation of the Crimean War (“Roger Fenton,” The J. Paul Getty Museum, http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artMakerDetails?maker=1708 [retrieved 3/2014]). 29. Anne Somers Cocks, “Louvre Abu Dhabi to open on 2 December 2015,” The Art Newspa- per (Nov. 20, 2013), http://z.umn.edu/l1t (retrieved 12/2013). 30. Prasad G. Thoppil and Patrick J. Hogan, “Persian Gulf Response to a Wintertime Shamal Wind Event,” Deep Sea Research Part I, Oceanographic Research Papers, 57:8 (2010): 952-53. 31. The GulfLabor Working Group’s documents appear at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/ gulflabor/; see also Human Rights Watch, “UAE: Artists Boycott Guggenheim-Abu Dhabi Protesting Exploitation of Foreign Migrant Workers” (2013), http://z.umn.edu/l1u (retrieved 12/2013). The Guggenheim responded in a press release several weeks later, offering to put in place a monitoring system (Richard Armstrong and Nancy Spector,

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“Guggenheim Responds to Proposed Artist Boycott” [2011], http://www.guggenheim.org/ new-york/press-room/news/3971). In January 2013, the petitioners declared that the boycott remained in place (GulfLabor Working Group, “Jan 2013: GulfLabor Public Statement” [2013], http://gulflabor.wordpress.com/2013/01/07/update/). On the protests in early 2014, see Julia Halperin, “Protest at Guggenheim over labour conditions on Saadiyat Island,” The Art Newspaper (Feb. 24, 2014), http://z.umn.edu/l1v (retrieved 3/2014). 32. Julia Halperin, “New Human Rights Watch Report Claims ‘Abuses Are Continuing’ for Workers at Abu Dhabi’s Museum Island,” Blouin ArtInfo (2012), http://z.umn.edu/l1w (retrieved 3/2014).

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