Louvre Will Share Collections with Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
- November 18, 2012 22:34
The world's most-visited museum, the Louvre, has made an exclusive agreement with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco to collaborate on a series of exhibitions and exchanges.
Over the next five years, the museums’ collections will be shared with audiences in Paris and San Francisco, which recently expanded their sister city agreement. Before the opening of the new exhibition "Royal Treasures from the Louvre: Louis XIV to Marie-Antoinette" at the Legion of Honor on Nov. 17, the accord was signed that paves the way for collaborations on publications, art conservation projects, and public education programs.
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which comprises the Legion of Honor and the de Young Museum, will work with the Louvre on loans and exhibitions. The exchanges “would take the form of antiquities, paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, prints, drawings, and textiles,’’ says the accord.
Specific works of art were still being discussed, say curators, but the loans may include whole exhibitions or single objects that could augment parts of their permanent collections.
“It is incredibly exciting to be involved in bringing to the public, both in Paris and San Francisco, great works from our two illustrious institutions,’’ said Richard Benefield, deputy director of the Fine Arts Museums. “The accord will not only bring forth new scholarship through the collaboration of our colleagues, but it will also give our visitors the opportunity to see great works of art from both museums in ways that would otherwise not be possible.’’
"Royal Treasures from the Louvre: Louis XIV to Marie-Antoinette," opened Saturday, November 17, as the first step in the collaboration. Many of the objects in the exhibition have never been shown in the United States and several have never left France, including some of the most exquisite treasures of the French monarchy from the time of Louis XIV until the Revolution of 1789.
Another major exhibition from the Louvre is expected to open in San Francisco by 2016.
