Schedule of Events for 2016
(Opening dates and program may be subject to change)
In 2016 the Louvre is spotlighting the 18th century with a generous,
eclectic program. Five exhibitions in Paris, together with a sixth
devoted to “fêtes galantes,” at the Louvre-Lens, will offer a fresh
reading of this artistically multifaceted period.
In the first half of 2016, in collaboration with the National Gallery of
Art in Washington, the Louvre will reveal the Enlightenment century’s
fascination with the past and the poetry of ruins, in a monographic
exhibition of the work of the great landscape painter Hubert Robert.
During the second half of the year the emphasis will be more
specifically on artists and their relationship to the 18th-century art
market. In association with the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles
an exhibition will focus anew on the oeuvre of the sculptor and
draftsman Edme Bouchardon.
First half of 2016 at the Musée du Louvre
__________________________________
Hubert Robert, Project for the Transformation of
the Grande Galerie of the Louvre. Department of
Paintings, Musée du Louvre
© RMN - Grand Palais (musée du Louvre) / Jean
-Gilles Berizzi
Jean-Lubin Vauzelle, The 13th-Century Hall
(detail), Department of Prints and Drawings. RF
5279.19, Musée du Louvre
© RMN - Grand Palais (musée du Louvre) /
Thierry Le Mage
HUBERT ROBERT (1733-1808), A VISIONARY PAINTER
March 9–May 30, 2016
2016
HALL NAPOLÉON
This exhibition explores the rich artistic output of one of the 18th century’s
greatest exponents of the poetic imagination: Hubert Robert, painter of ruins
and landscapes.
A true man of the Enlightenment—witty, sociable, and with an endlessly
enquiring mind—Robert embarked on a remarkable artistic itinerary, which
led him to Rome in the mid-18th century and then, for the bulk of his
career, to Paris.
In his painting this prolific visionary embraced the separate genres of poetic
landscape, archeological ruins, architectural fantasies, and urban views.
In a selection of drawings, painted sketches, engravings, monumental
paintings, and decorative ensembles, the Louvre provides an overview of
this artist’s brilliant diversity and fecund curiosity.
A REVOLUTIONARY MUSEUM: ALEXANDRE LENOIR’S MUSEUM
OF FRENCH MONUMENTS
April 7–July 4, 2016
ROTONDE SULLY
Dating from 1795, the Museum of French Monuments was France’s second
national museum, coming in the wake of the Louvre, founded in 1793. It
played a major part in the birth of the notion of heritage and the emergence
of medieval history. However, it was closed in 1816 and its contents are
currently to be found in institutions in France—the Louvre’s Department of
Sculptures, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the basilica of Saint-Denis,
the Musée de Cluny, Notre Dame, various churches in the Paris diocese—
and abroad: mainly in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, but also in
the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
The exhibition recounts the pioneering achievement of Alexandre Lenoir as
museum curator, exhibition designer, and fervent heritage protector. It also
explores the establishment and history of the Museum of French
Monuments, whose exhibition style had a powerful influence on the
sensibility and the arts of the period.
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Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755), L’Escalier
donnant accès du bosquet de Bacchus à la grande
terrasse © musée du Louvre dist. RMN-Grand
Palais /Suzanne Nagy
IN ARCUEIL’S LEAFY GROVES: DRAWING A GARDEN IN
THE 18TH CENTURY
March 24–June 20, 2016
MOLLIEN ROOMS
The Arcueil domain knew its golden age in the early 18th century.
Situated near the aqueduct built for Marie de Médicis between 1614 and
1624, the château was surrounded by a vast garden that included
flowerbeds, woodland, covered galleries, and stairs. After the death of the
Prince de Guise the domain found a new owner, whose heirs subdivided
it. When it was sold in 1752 the château and its grounds were razed under
circumstances that remain unclear. Between the 19th and 20th centuries
the town of Arcueil sprang up around the aqueduct; of this substantial
estate, with its sumptuous gardens and numerous outbuildings, only a few
fragments now remain.
Nonetheless, the memory of this historic site lives on in landscape
drawings of Arcueil made by various artists in the 1740s.
The goal of the exhibition is to present virtually all of these drawings for
the first time.
At the Louvre-Lens
Jean-Antoine Watteau, Pilgrimage to the Isle of
Cythera (detail). Department of Paintings, Musée
du Louvre
© RMN - Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre) /
Stéphane Maréchalle
_____________________________________________________________
DANCE, KISS ANYONE YOU LIKE
PARTIES AND PLEASURE IN THE TIME OF MADAME DE
POMPADOUR
Until February 29, 2016
LOUVRE-LENS
Rustic decor, elegant young people and refined leisure pursuits: the
exhibition celebrates the theme of the “fête galante” and the “pastorale.”
Popularized in the first half of the 18th century, first by Antoine Watteau,
then by François Boucher, these subjects achieved great success until the
French Revolution. First adopted by painters, they spread quickly to other
disciplines—in particular the decorative arts—and became widespread
throughout Europe.
Thanks to exceptional loans from the Musée du Louvre and around twenty
prestigious institutions, this exhibition brings together 220 works. The
bucolic design of the exhibition combines paintings, prints, drawings,
furniture, ceramics, tapestries, and stage costumes. From the roots to the
latest developments, the exhibition traces the fortunes of a delicate,
seductive art, which enchanted Europe in the Age of Enlightenment. A
tribute to French taste and the joy of living!
Charles Le Brun, Chancellor Séguier at the Entry of
Louis XIV into Paris in 1660 (detail), about 1655–1661.
Department of Paintings, Musée du Louvre
© RMN-GP (musée du Louvre) / Hervé Lewandowski
CHARLES LE BRUN
May 18–August 29, 2016
LOUVRE-LENS
The painter Charles Le Brun (1619–1690) is being given pride of place at
the Louvre-Lens. Like Delacroix for Romanticism and Monet for
Impressionism, Le Brun stands out as the embodiment of an epoch: the
age of Louis XIV. Son of a humble sculptor of tombstones, he was the
King’s First Painter for almost thirty years; it is to him that we owe the
decoration of the Hall of Mirrors in the Château de Versailles.
France’s most important artist in the second half of the 17th century, he
was also the director of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture and
of the Gobelins tapestry works.
The Louvre-Lens exhibition does ample justice to Le Brun’s multifaceted
talent, which found expression not only in large-format works—tapestry,
for example, and the scale cartoons for the Hall of Mirrors—but also in
his more intimate sketches, with all their accuracy and feeling of touch.
Here are to be found the full range of his gifts, the liveliness of his
imagination, and his flair for organization.
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EVA JOSPIN - PANORAMA
April 12–September 2016
COUR CARRÉE OF THE MUSÉE DU LOUVRE
Eva Jospin. Panorama © Eva Jospin-architecture
Outsign. Courtesy Noirmontartproduction.
Eva Jospin’s Panorama will be on display in the outdoor Cour Carrée of
the Musée du Louvre. It’s an architectural artwork in itself. The pavilion’s
mirrored exterior walls will reflect the stony aspect of Paris and the
palace, and the decoration of the Musée du Louvre. Inside, the plant realm
will be given place of pride along with the panorama, echoing the world
of forests and caves.
The artist’s Panorama is in line with traditional panoramas that became an
increasingly popular attraction in the 18th century. They were the
precursors of shows, fairs, rides, cinema and all sorts of entertainment that
the city offered its inhabitants for a fee. The earliest known panorama in
France, the Panorama of Constantinople by Pierre Prévost, is housed in
the Louvre’s Department of Paintings. It was displayed during the
exhibition “Philippe Djian at the Louvre”.
Eva Jospin works with cardboard, a material rarely used, to create works
in low and even high relief. With Panorama, two hallmarks of the artist’s
oeuvre, perspective and depth, are worked on a grander scale. This work
was designed for the Cour Carrée of the Musée du Louvre, and will later
go on tour in several cities throughout the world.
JR AT THE LOUVRE
May 24–June 28, 2016
LOUVRE PYRAMID AND AUDITORIUM
JR at the Musée du Louvre © jr-art.net.
JR at the Musée du Louvre © jr-art.net.
JR has chosen the biggest gallery in the world to showcase his art: public
spaces. For some ten years now, the artist’s monumental photographic
collages have been popping up on the walls of cities in all four corners of
the globe. “The most important thing,” he explains, “is where I put my
photos and the meaning they take on depending on the place”. Whether it
be the Middle East, the favelas of Rio, slums of Kenya, New York, Le
Havre or Shanghai, JR’s works leave no one indifferent, because they
return our gaze and cut to the very heart of our innermost selves. His
spectacular mode of intervention poses questions about artistic creation,
the role of images in the age of globalization, and their widespread use,
from intimate circles to mass distribution. Invited by the “biggest museum
in the world”—which also generates the most selfies—JR has set his
sights on one of the Louvre’s symbols, the Pyramid, which he intends to
transform with a surprising anamorphic image.
Throughout the weekend of 25–27 May, 2016, working around the clock,
JR will take the auditorium and the museum by storm to give us his view
of the Louvre, and vice versa.
Talks, opportunities to meet participants, films, concerts, workshops…
this exceptional program will also shed light on the creative process of an
artist who is engaged in many projects, from films with Agnès Varda in
northern France to a performance with dancers from the New York City
Ballet.
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Second half of 2016 at the Musée du Louvre
_____________________________________________
Edme Bouchardon, Cupid Cutting His Bow from
the Club of Hercules. Department of Sculptures,
Musée du Louvre © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée
du Louvre) / Stéphane Maréchalle
Gabriel Metsu, A Card Game, NM 51 ©
BOUCHARDON (1698 - 1762)
September 15–December 5, 2016
HALL NAPOLÉON
The Musée du Louvre and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles are
presenting a tribute to the famed sculptor and draftsman Edme
Bouchardon (1698–1762), considered from the outset a truly remarkable
artist.
Son of a sculptor, Bouchardon trained at the Royal Academy of Painting
and Sculpture in Paris before making a highly productive stay at the
French Academy in Rome (1723–1732), which culminated in projects for
the pope and election to the Academy of Saint Luke. Summoned to France
by the director of the King’s Buildings, who was intrigued by his
reputation, he was quickly given a studio and living quarters at the
Louvre. Admitted to the Royal Academy in 1735, he then became the
King’s Sculptor.
He was much celebrated in his own time for such sculptural works as the
Rue de Grenelle fountain, the ornamentation of the choir in the church of
Saint-Sulpice, the marble statue of Cupid Cutting His Bow from the Club
of Hercules, and the equestrian monument to Louis XV in the center of
Place Louis XV (now Place de la Concorde). His sets of drawings, among
them the Cris de Paris, met with similar success.
Cited in the Encyclopédie as the heir to Puget and Girardon, Bouchardon
was seen by his contemporaries as the champion of revivification of the
arts. The artist Cochin called him “the greatest sculptor and the best
draftsman of his century.” Numerous recent studies have increased our
understanding of Neoclassicism, but this first significant monographic
exhibition will facilitate our appreciation of Bouchardon’s aesthetic, with
its perfect balance between allusions to antiquity and fidelity to nature.
TESSIN COLLECTION: A SWEDE IN PARIS IN THE 18TH CENTURY
October 17, 2016–January 16, 2017
ROTONDE SULLY
Although not officially bearing the title, Count Carl Gustaf Tessin acted as
Swedish ambassador in Paris from 1739 to 1741. A passionate collector of
paintings and drawings during those three years, he became a friend of
Pierre-Jean Mariette and acquired works at the remarkable Crozat sale in
1741.
Heavily in debt on his return to Sweden, he was obliged to sell part of his
collection of paintings to King Frederick I, who gave them to Queen
Louisa Ulrika. In 1750 the count also had to part with his collection of
drawings, which was acquired by Crown Prince Adolf Frederick.
Organized in tandem with the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, now home
to the greater part of Tessin’s collection, the exhibition takes a combined
chronological and thematic approach to his modus operandi. In doing so,
it also provides an insight into the art market and Parisian taste in the mid18th century.
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THE BAROQUE GESTURE: IN THE SALZBURG COLLECTIONS
October 17, 2016–January 16, 2017
MOLLIEN ROOMS
German-speaking lands proved extremely fertile centers of artistic
creation in the 18th century, when lay and religious authorities alike
commissioned prestigious works from the greatest masters of the
German and Austrian Baroque and Rococo. The ancient city of
Salzburg was one of the most active centers, undergoing a complete
transformation under the impetus of its prince-archbishops until
1803. Music thrived there—the city became the birthplace of
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1756—as did architecture, painting,
and sculpture. Indeed, Salzburg was often called the Rome of the
North. This exhibition brings together some 100 works, drawings,
paintings and sculptures on special loan from museums in Salzburg
such as the Salzburgermuseum, the Residenzgalerie, the museum of
St. Peter’s Abbey and several other religious houses. It provides an
opportunity for visitors to get to know and better understand the
Baroque and Rococo in Salzburg, Austria, and Southern Germany.
At the Louvre-Lens
_____________________________________________________________
Paul Troger, Salomons
Museum GmbH
Urteil.
Salzburg
HISTORY BEGINS IN MESOPOTAMIA: FROM SUMER TO
BABYLON
November 2016–January 2017
LOUVRE-LENS
Situated between the two great rivers, largely in what is now Iraq,
Mesopotamia was the cradle of modern economics and of the
writing with which history began. It was also home to the first cities
and the oldest known political and administrative systems. Our
present-day cities, living environment, beliefs, and imaginative
ethos might be very different from those of ancient Mesopotamia,
but they remain the legacy of those fundamental “firsts” of its
civilization. This is the world, at once close and at a distant remove,
that the exhibition will present in the form of major artworks and
newly discovered testimony to the Mesopotamia of the 3rd to the
1st millennium BC.
The aim is to demonstrate the foundational importance of this world
heritage, partially known to us through the Bible and rediscovered
by 19th-century archeological ventures: a heritage now under threat
from the tragic situation in Iraq and the Middle East.
Head of Hammurabi. Iran, Suse. First
Babylonian Dynasty. Department of Near
Eastern Antiquities, Musée du Louvre © Musée
du Louvre, dist. RMN - Grand Palais / Raphaël
Chipault
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Et toujours
_____________________________________________
Tanuki, Japon © 2015, musée du quai Branly,
photo Claude Germain / Scala, Florence.
Statuette of Hercules resting, Lysippe ©
RMN Grand Palais (musée du Louvre) /
Hervé Lewandowski. Dark Vador © & TM.
Lucasfilm Ltd.
FOUNDING MYTHS: FROM HERCULES TO DARTH VADER
Until July 4, 2016
PETITE GALERIE
What is a myth? And how are myths portrayed? How have artists
appropriated them? Told, sung, written, and illustrated, myths are a part of
all cultures and civilizations, including contemporary popular culture.
Presented in the Petite Galerie throughout the school year, the exhibition
“Founding Myths” tells how illustrators, sculptors, painters, puppeteers,
filmmakers, and musicians around the world have drawn inspiration from
myths, given them form, and brought them to life.
The exhibition displays some 70 artworks, grouped into four sections. The
first gallery invites you to discover the tales told by different civilizations in
an effort to explain the creation of the world. Then find out how the cycles
of nature are recounted in Greek, Egyptian, and Persian civilizations. Meet
mythological heroes such as Gilgamesh, Orpheus, Hercules, and Icarus, and
see how they have been portrayed by classical and contemporary artists. In
the final gallery, ponder modern-day interpretations of myths and
metamorphoses: from Jean Cocteau to Star Wars, do the mythologies of
popular culture not still draw from the same repertoire of stories and heroes?
Musée national Eugène-Delacroix
____________________________
DELACROIX AND ANCIENT ART
Until March 7, 2016
MUSÉE NATIONAL EUGÈNE-DELACROIX
Taking as its starting point Eugène Delacroix’s decoration of the facade of
his studio, undertaken when he set up house on Place de Fürstenberg in
Paris, this exhibition—organized in tandem with the Louvre’s Department of
Greek, Etruscan, and Roman antiquities—explores the artist’s close
relationship with ancient art. Well preserved, this personal exercise in
ornamentation underscores Delacroix’s enduring interest in Greek and
Roman antiquity as the innovative trigger for his way of seeing.
This exhibition sets the artist’s drawings and paintings against the moldings
he chose for the studio facade, together with the books and other writings
underlying this choice. A group of autograph documents and manuscripts
point up the theoretical aspect of his Romantic approach and the marked
contribution made by the art of antiquity. There will be a special focus on
his unfinished project for a Dictionary of Fine Arts, begun in 1857, the year
he moved to Place de Fürstenberg.
Eugène Delacroix, Study of a Male Nude,
known as The Polish Man (detail). Musée
Eugène-Delacroix, Paris © RMN - GrandPalais (musée du Louvre) / Tony Querrec
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RENOVATION OF THE RECEPTION AREAS BENEATH THE PYRAMID
Scheduled to end in July 2016
In 2014, the Musée du Louvre embarked on what will be its biggest construction
project in the coming few years. Inaugurated in 1989, I.M. Pei’s Pyramid was
originally designed to receive 4.5 million visitors a year. Twenty five years later,
annual museum attendance has nearly reached the 10 million mark. An
insufficient carrying capacity results in considerable inconvenience, such as long
waiting lines and noise pollution, and makes it difficult for visitors to find their
bearings.
As part of a wider effort to promote the Louvre’s collections, the Pyramid
Project is the first phase of a large-scale project aiming to put the visitor back at
the center of the museum and its permanent collections.
The entrances and reception areas under the Pyramid will be reorganized,
moving logistical functions such as ticket sales, cloakrooms, and restrooms to
the Pyramid’s outermost perimeter in order to enhance visitor experience. With
this project, conceived by museum staff and architectural firm Search, the iconic
Hall Napoléon will revert back to its original function as visit planning area,
regaining its grandeur and serenity without losing its architectural integrity.
Beneath the Louvre Pyramid © 2010, musée
du Louvre / Antoine Mongodin
The Pavillon de l’Horloge of the Louvre
© 2013, musée du Louvre / Olivier Ouadah
THE PAVILLON DE L’HORLOGE: DISCOVER THE LOUVRE
Opening in July 2016
AILE SULLY, SALLE DE LA MAQUETTE, SALLE DE LA CHAPELLE,
SALLE BEISTEGUI
Sully Wing: Salle de la Maquette, Salle de la Chapelle, Salle Beisteigui
Designed like a “site map” working on three levels, the Interpretation Center
for the history and collections of the Louvre will provide a history of the
building and its collections, and with the aid of models, photos, and films,
will spotlight current developments at the museum: recent acquisitions, offsite exhibitions, expert input, works undergoing conservation, and rooms
being restored or enhanced. This new space will also highlight the diversity
of the collection by indicating a variety of visitor itineraries.
EXHIBITION DEVOTED TO ART AND CULTURAL EDUCATION
THE BODY IN MOVEMENT: FROM THE OPERA TO THE
MUSEUM
October 2016–June 2017
PETITE GALERIE
An unprecedented, long-term project dedicated to art education, the Petite
Galerie invites young visitors and their accompanying adults (parents,
teachers, youth leaders, etc.) to explore a different theme each year through
major artworks from prehistory to the present day.
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