Centuries-old museums slowly accept living artists
Anselm Kiefer talking during the press conference at Musee du Louvre
In the Louvre the German artist Anselm Kiefer has produced a monumental painting over 30 feet high and nearly 15 feet. It will be on view in a stairwell linking the Egyptian and Mesopotamian antiquities in the museum’s Sully wing.
The staircases, ceiling and so on were chosen because “they were the only places left,” said Marie-Laure Bernadac, the Louvre’s chief curator of contemporary art. From Anish Kapoor’s huge curved mirror in the middle of the Khorsabad courtyard to Mike Kelley’s video projections in the medieval moats, she has repeatedly implanted temporary exhibits of contemporary artwork side by side with ancient artifacts. She said she was following a trend that the French have been slow to embrace. “The Anglo-Saxons had been doing this for more than 10 years,” she said. “I thought, “Why don’t we do the same thing at the Louvre?’”
Kiefer’s contribution will be followed by those of three other artists over the next three years. The American artist Cy Twombly will paint the vast white ceiling in the Salle des Bronzes, and François Morellet of France will decorate the windows of the Lefuel stairwell. The fourth artist was meant to be Luciano Fabro of Italy, but he died last summer, and his replacement has yet to be announced.
Go to website Musée du Louvre
Read more about contemporary art at the Louvre (Magazine No. 5 , March 2005)
Read what the international papers have to say about it:
New York Times (October 21, 2007)
Die Welt (October 24, 2007)
Le Monde (October 24, 2007)
Der Standard (October 25, 2007)
Recent examples of traditional museums inviting contemporary artists, include the National Gallery in London where in 2003 the Australian artist Ron Mueck was asked to make new work in response to the Gallery’s collection. In 2005, the German artist Thomas Struth was asked to show his Prado pictures next to the respective paintings in the Madrid museum.
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