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The Musée d'Art Moderne's New Venue; More
A NEW VENUE FOR THE MUSÉE D'ART MODERNE
The Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris may have closed its doors temporarily, but the exhibitions continue at various locations throughout Paris while asbestos is being removed from its building on avenue Président Wilson. Libération's Elisabeth Lebovici took a look at "Ailleurs, Ici" (Elsewhere, Here), the museum's inaugural exhibition at its temporary venue, the Couvent des Cordeliers, a former convent in rue de l'École de Médecine. Francis Alÿs leads the way with The Leak, 2003, a video of a performance dating from last summer, when the artist walked with a bucket dripping white paint all the way from the museum to the convent. "This way, the arrival precedes the departure," writes Lebovici. Other works include films that aim to "reclaim the street" by Oliver Payne and Nick Relph, a low-tech radio by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, Didier Fiuza Faustino's architectural installation, and Tino Sehgal's spin on the traditional Musée d'Art Moderne guard's uniform. As Lebovici notes, the museum's program at the Cordeliers, dubbed "Le Club des Cordeliers" after the revolutionary debating club that once met in the building, will continue until the museum is ready to reopen at its old location—a date that has not yet been set. "Ailleurs, Ici" ends February 29.
LOUVRE ATTRACTS A YOUNGER CROWD
Despite the ongoing slump in tourism, the Louvre drew 5.7 million visitors to its galleries last year. As Le Monde’s Emmanuel de Roux reports, the attendance figures for 2003 almost match those for 2002 and represent an increase from 2001, when only 5.1 million visitors came to the museum. The figures can be attributed to the increase in temporary shows, such as the exhibition on Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings, as well as to a more solid local following. French visitors seem to be replacing the missing foreign tourists and accounted for 36.1 percent of the total attendance figures, an increase from 33.4 percent in 2002. According to de Roux, the Louvre is also steadily attracting a much younger crowd: Of the 1.9 million who have benefited from a recent waiver in the entrance fees, 1 million were under the age of eighteen.
Evidently buoyed by the 2003 statistics, the Louvre has announced that it will now waive the fee for visitors under age twenty-six. Others will be able to visit free every Monday evening and on the first Sunday of every month. The bad news? Ticket prices will rise by 12 percent to 8.50 euro (11 dollars) for adults and 6 euro (8 dollars) for reduced-rate tickets. However, visitors will now be able to use the same ticket on the same day to visit the Musée Delacroix, which has joined the Louvre. And where’s all the money going? As de Roux reports, at least 20 percent of ticket sales go toward new acquisitions.
CULTURAL COMMISSION DEBATES CROFF'S NOMINATION
Il Manifesto reports that Cultural Minister Guiliano Urbani suffered yet another setback in his attempt to nominate Davide Croff as the new president of the Fondazione Biennale di Venezia, Urbani’s partially privatized version of the entity that manages the city’s six festivals. After being blocked in the senate last week, the motion did not fare much better during initial debates in the cultural commission in Italy’s house of representatives. “It’s been an indecent story from the start,” one member of the commission told Il Manifesto. “From the Minister’s attempts to create legislation full of contradictions right up to the nomination of Davide Croff. Croff is a first-rate banker, but I don’t see what that has to do with the Biennale.” According to the paper, rumor has it that Croff’s nomination was the result of a secret agreement between Venice’s mayor, Paolo Costa, and Urbani, who in exchange would have been able to name Giancarlo Giannini as the director of the next film festival. Costa has flatly denied the rumor, but according to the paper a “climate of distrust” has overshadowed the debates in the cultural commission, which will vote on Croff’s nomination on February 11.
PRUSSIAN NO MORE
What’s in a name? Too much history—at least if the name is the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. The foundation—which includes seventeen Berlin museums and their treasures as well as numerous archives and libraries—announced its intention to change the name to Stiftung Nationaler Kunstbesitz, or National Art Heritage Foundation. The name change is meant to reflect the fact that the foundation, named after the defunct Prussian state that once included the city of Berlin, is nationally funded and thus receives subsidies from all German states, from Bavaria to Nordrhein-Westphalen. In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Frank Schirrmacher recalls that the foundation is the very last federal entity to carry the adjective “Prussian” (the Allies fully eliminated the state in 1947). Despite Prussia’s bellicose reputation, Schirrmacher feels that changing the name amounts to nothing less than rewriting history, leaving out a chapter on an inestimable cultural contribution that includes Kant, Kleist, Schinkel, Fontane, Kurt Tucholsky, and Max Liebermann. “Napoléon once said, ‘Prussia was only an episode.’ Politically and militarily, that turned out to be true. But what was thought, painted, and written—and what clearly could have been produced only in Prussia—was not just an episode. Precisely because Prussia cannot be located territorially but exists only extraterritorially as an area on the map of culture and tradition, it needs this last spark of life: as the adjective in the name of a museum foundation.”