The Gallery of the Five Continents, the negation of the Louvre`

Acquiring works of contemporary art does not form part of the missions of the Musée du Louvre, as they can be read on the institution’s own website. The decree establishing the Établissement public adds to them — and one does not understand, moreover, why this mission is not mentioned on the page cited — the contribution “to the enrichment of the national collections through the acquisition of cultural property on behalf of the State, whether for consideration or free of charge”, but nowhere is contemporary art mentioned, the chronological limit of the collections being the year 1848, even if this limit has been unilaterally pushed back for the Department of Byzantine and Eastern Christian Art, which has moreover recently made it possible to acquire at great expense a work by Fabergé whose place was not at the Louvre, but at Orsay.

If, since the time of Henri Loyrette, the museum has resumed a policy of contemporary art, this was initially intended to complement certain décors. There was then no question of buying “mobile” contemporary artworks, identified as belonging to the collections. This new policy was outlined by Jean-Luc Martinez and is now being made permanent by Laurence des Cars, who does not hesitate to bring in works with no connection whatsoever to the museum’s collections, and at great expense. This is the case with a group of paintings forming a single work by Marlène Dumas, a South African artist, recently installed at the entrance, porte des Lions, of the pavillon des Sessions, renamed the Gallery of the Five Continents (ill. 1).

More serious still : this…