Art - A New WMD?

This is a follow-up to my previous post on the Louvre giving more detailed background information on the project to divest the national museum of part of its collections. The information is translated and somewhat abridged from an article inLibération.

Both articles appear at my website Galliawatch.

Abu Dhabi is dreaming of becoming the cultural capital of the Persian Gulf, and France would like to serve as guide. By the year's end, the Minister of Culture, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres (known as RDDV) is expected to travel to the Emirate to conclude an agreement on the creation of a museum bearing the Louvre label in Abu Dhabi... After signing an agreement in July for the construction of an "Abu Dhabi Guggenheim", with Frank Gehry as architect, the Emirate is anxious to possess a great universal museum. But will the French be able to follow through?

The unheard-of demands of the Emirate are worthy of the Pharoahs. It is seeking a grand general museum, completely like the Louvre in its conception, built on the sands of Abu Dhabi by a French architect, Jean Nouvel, so it seems, and staffed by teams of experts and French conservators, with a schedule of exhibitions extending over several years. But that's not all. The project is part of an even more ambitious scheme: to create five museums in one fell swoop. Besides the Louvre and the Guggenheim, are planned a maritime museum, a museum of Islamic art, and a "center of living arts". All within a luxurious tourist complex, reflecting what the Emirate is ready to pay to lead Abu Dhabi, an oil-rich country of 700,000 inhabitants, into the post-petroleum age...

"And who better than France to represent this cultural radiance?" say the delegates from the Emirate in Paris.

After all, didn't the Emirate sign a contract last year with the Sorbonne, permitting the university to set up a college in the Emirate that offers courses in literature, history, geography and art history, taught in French by professors from the Sorbonne and awarding French diplomas?

Note: This is the first I've heard of the Sorbonne in Abu Dhabi.

According to those close to Jacques Chirac, "The President has always had close relations with the rulers of the Emirates. For a long time France has had special ties to Abu Dhabi, in the fields of defense, trade, higher education and culture. The French President has supported the project from the beginning."

The presidential order is clear: the project, as it appeared in early 2005, could not be turned down. Besides, how could Paris turn down the Emirate's request, when Airbus is behind schedule in the production of the A380, and the Emirates airline company of Dubai, that ordered 43 of these giant planes, is not happy about the long delays from the European consortium? Some things are unavoidable.

Note: Here is one possible motive for the surrender of the Louvre collections by the French to the Arabs. The unanswered question (actually the unasked question): did the Emirate make the French an offer they couldn't resist? Was there a threat? Or, are the French so accustomed to surrender that a threat was unnecessary?

The article goes on to describe the origins of the project and names as its promoter Yazid Sabeg, a Frenchman known to be a proponent of affirmative action and a man very close to the Emirates. Sabeg, from the start, had the complete approval of the President and then had to win over the Ministry of Culture:

At the Ministry their eyes popped open wide at the appetite of the Emirate: "At the time the Arab delegation unveiled a gigantic project of cultural-touristic urbanism to be implanted on the island of Saadiyat (a natural reserve 27 square kilometers, just off the coast of Abu Dhabi) that, at one end of the island, would bring five museums together by the year 2012, and at the opposite end create a magnet for tourists with luxury hotels and a golf course", explained one diplomat...

Henri Loyrette, the curator of the Louvre, who had initiated the Atlanta project, began to have serious doubts about Abu Dhabi:

In fact, the head of the Louvre rebelled at the idea of yielding the name Louvre as if he were selling a label for ready-made clothing...And everyone began to wonder about the artistic freedoms in a monarchy where the interdictions of Islam would preclude the exhibition of nudes and religious figures. "We began to wonder who Sabeg was really working for. And suddenly, Sabeg was off the case," says one expert...

At this point, what seems to have happened is that the French authorities had to move Henri Loyrette, the Louvre's curator, out of the picture as well, in order to move ahead with their plan. So an independent group was created to lead the operation, composed of experts from the great French museums, and charged with the tasks of conception, architecture, and cataloguing the collections. The group was entirely financed by the Emirates!

In other words, the Emirate will pay cash - 750 million euros at least. At that price, the Louvre and the other French museums accepted (did they have any choice?) what had previously seemed unacceptable: to lend their art works and to commit to a ten-year program of temporary exhibitions in Abu Dhabi...

Is it safe to say that the French government, in need of money, is being sustained by the Arab countries, in exchange for the French patrimony? In short, has France sold her soul to the devil? This is, indeed, Eurabia in action.