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Photo: Stéphane de Sakutin/Agence France-Presse

With the Louvre receiving over eight million visitors last year and other French art collections drawing millions more, further incentives would hardly appear necessary to attract people to this country’s museums.

Indeed, at weekends and during summer vacations, the Louvre, for one, often resembles a crowded railroad station, with Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa” the preferred destination.

Yet there is a problem: in the case of the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay and other national galleries, where entry tickets cost between €6 and €9, or about $9 and $12, some two-thirds of all visitors are foreign tourists, as are three-quarters of visitors between the ages of 18 and 25.

Now the new government of President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to alter this profile. With a view to persuading more French to enjoy art, it is pondering whether to follow the British and Danish examples of allowing free access to the permanent collections of major museums.

Read full article (International Herald Tribune, July 19, 2007)

The bullet-scarred Old Airport in the city of Entebbe, Uganda, will be turned into an aviation museum. In 1976, an Air France plane was hijacked by sympathisers to the Palestinian cause and landed at Entebbe, with the blessing of President Idi Amin. The hijackers demanded the release of all Palestinian political prisoners in exchange for the, mostly Jewish, passengers.

In one of the most dramatic rescue operations, Israeli commandos under the cover of darkness, flew into Entebbe, rescued the 100 passengers and flew out before the Ugandan army could mount a credible defence.

The raid on Entebbe was pictured in many movies, including the most recent Oscar-winning film, ‘The Last King of Scotland’. So apparently, now is the right time to capitalise on the history surrounding the building by turning it into a kind of aviation museum, with the raid on Entebbe as the main attraction.

Read arcticle (New Vision (Kampala, 17 July 2007)

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The architecture and design magazine Arcspace has realised an online projectspace in Second Life, the so-called Multimedia Building, where it will enable visitors to run videos, conduct forums. exhibit projects, listen to music and a lot more. They are currently running a Gehry (yes, from the architect who designed the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao) Technologies flythrough video, produced by Vanilla Five for the exhibition Digital Project at the Danish Architecture Center in Copenhagen. The first exhibition will be up in September.

Join Second Life (Membership is free)
More about the project in arcspaceSL announcement

Tate has set ambitious targets to increase its ethnic minority visitors by 2010, The Art Newspaper can disclose. In 2006-7, Tate Britain had 49,000 Black and Ethnic Minority visitors (3%), and it hopes to increase this to 5%. Tate Modern had 200,000 ethnic minority visitors (4%), and it too is aiming for a 2% rise.Using MORI researchers who interview a sample of visitors, Tate monitors individual UK residents aged 17 and over, so the figures exclude children, school groups and foreign tourists. Nationwide, the proportion of the UK population from ethnic minorities is 9%, although the concentration in Greater London is larger.

Last month a Tate spokesperson explained: “It is our ambition to improve the number of Black and Minority Ethnic visitors and we are working on a strategy.” In the current funding agreement with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Tate’s Diversity Strategy is described as a “key priority”, although no statistical targets are set.

Read full article (Art Newspaper, July 12, 2007)
Tate Online

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Go have a drink at the roof of the Metropolitan Museum, while enjoying the new Frank Stella exhibition and a stunning view of Manhattan and Central Park.

Metropolitan Museum website

The Art Newspaper gives background information on the news that the US State Department is funding a new museum initiative designed to advance US foreign policy. The department’s cultural-diplomacy arm, the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, has established a programme in conjunction with the American Association of Museums (AAM), that will see US museums collaborating with foreign institutions in “community-focused” partnerships.

Proposals that include foreign museums pre-selected by US Embassies and Consulates “may receive additional consideration by the MCCA Selection Committee”, the application guidelines state.The State Department requires that (these proposals include a statement explaining: “How this project promotes US foreign policy.”

Read full article (The Art Newspaper, July 12, 2007)

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Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam has revealed plans for a new storage space for its expanding collections, including striking images of five possible designs by Rotterdam based architects MVRDV. The director of the museum, Sjarel Ex, claims that it will become the first museum depot in the world to accomodate both private and public (museum) collections, blurring the boundaries between personal and institutional interests. How much private collectors will have to pay for storing their valuable belongings remains unclear, but this concept could help museums turning a burden into a cash cow.

Go to website Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
Go to website MVRDV

The most controversial symbol of globalization in Beijing has closed its door.

The Starbucks outlet in the Forbidden City downed its shutters on Friday after months of online protests by millions of people, saying its presence undermined the solemnity of the former imperial palace and trampled over Chinese culture.

The move follows the Forbidden City management’s decision to allow shops to operate only under its brand name.

The Forbidden City was the seat of 24 emperors before the end of imperial rule in 1911. It is China’s top tourist attraction, drawing about 7 million visitors a year.

Vice-president of the palace management board Li Wenru said Starbucks was offered the option of operating under the Palace Museum brand name like the other outlets.

Read full article (China Daily, July 16, 2007)

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The organisation of the Amsterdam Museumnacht (’n8′) will launch its newest project on July 16: nachtgeluiden - museum in mp3. These are audio files made by students, artists, curators, random and famous Amsterdam citizens, that you can listen to on the website, download or subscribe to as a podcast. With these mp3s n8 tries to take away barriers from experiencing the museums in Amsterdam, and to open new ways of adding stories to the public realm.

Anyone can join in, and add his or her story, but the first mp3s have been made by museum staff, artists and students. They are the start of a growing database, managed by n8, that is collectively updated by the Amsterdam museums. The platform has been developed and designed by Grrr Amsterdam.

nachtgeluiden - museum in mp3
homepage of n8

From Artforum:

French Prime Minister François Fillon has announced that France will experiment with free admission to certain state museums in Paris and beyond, measuring the effects over the course of an unspecified trial period. In an editorial for Le Figaro, Emmanuel Fessy questions the policy, which has already been adopted—with notable success—in Great Britain. “What if free museums were not actually a good idea?” asks Fessy. The Louvre welcomes 7.6 million visitors every year—two thirds of whom are foreigners—and collects €40 million ($54.5 million) from the sale of tickets to its permanent collections alone. Apart from lost revenues, free museums “will only increase the pernicious sentiment of no-cost culture,” writes Fessy, “a sentiment already fed by the development of the Internet and the explosion of music and film piracy.”

Read full article (Artforum, July 10, 2007)
Read editorial in Le Figaro (July 5, 2007)