THE LOUVRE’S NEW LEASE ON LIFE. France’s minister of culture has announced the winners of an architecture competition to renovate the Louvre and build a new room to house the Mona Lisa, reports Le Figaro. The winning designer of the project, known as the Louvre Nouvelle Renaissance, is STUDIOS Architecture, a firm that was founded in San Francisco and is now based in Paris. The firm is joined by New York–based architect Annabelle Selldorf, who will design the museum’s interior and recently did the Frick Collection’s renovation. The French agency BASE will spearhead landscaping and urban design. The architecture competition was delayed because it was criticized for being too costly and unnecessary following the October theft of France’s crown jewels from the Louvre. However, the Louvre’s new president, Christophe Leribault, and France’s culture minister have argued that the project will be reoriented to give greater emphasis on upgrading the museum’s outdated security and safety systems and preserving the former royal palace’s leaking, aging building structure. A press release sums up this approach: “Repair and transform, that is the dual objective.” The renovation is expected to cost 1 billion euros ($1.16 billion), and will begin by 2028.
The Digest
Delayed by war, Art Dubai’s scaled-back wrapped over the weekend. It was “a reflection of our collective resilience,” according to Vilma Jurkute, executive director of Dubai’s cultural district, Alserkal. [The Art Newspaper]
Sotheby’s sold 93 percent of the 350 lots offered during its Friday day sales, leading to near-record sales totals. [Puck]
A new exhibition at the Shoah Memorial in Paris reveals newly discovered photographs of the first roundup of Jews in France on May 14, 1941. Among them are chilling images of families and couples forced apart. [The New York Times]
China hopes France’s new law on colonial-era looted art will help it recover treasures stolen from the Old Summer Palace in 1860 by French and British troops. [RFI]
Turner Prize–winning artist Keith Tyson is donating £250,000 ($334,500) toward Oxford university’s next Savilian chair in astronomy. [The Financial Times]
The Kicker
“GET YOUR KICKS on Route 66,” as Nat King Cole crooned. Those words have taken on a timely new meaning as the famous American highway approaches its 100th anniversary in November. The occasion was as good a reason as any for Los Angeles Times reporter Christopher Reynolds to go looking for said kicks, on what he writes is no mere road, but an “American artifact.” Reynolds drives the entire stretch, through eight states and dozens of small towns from Chicago to Santa Monica in 17 days. He experiences its “curiosities and paradoxes” along the way, from the Cadillac Ranch, a 1970s art installation sculpture that invites visitors to participate with spray painting; to an Art Deco former gas station turned café and inn; to old, giant fiberglass space cowboys advertising for Buck Atom’s Cosmic Curios. There are also visitors from all over the world. “You never know what language or accent you’re going to hear,” says Rhys Martin, a manager for the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Preserve Route 66 initiative.
