by Maria Bodeanu
The museum will exhibit, encourage and promote the artistic and creative house a corporate collection - featuring works by Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, and others – and will be used for the presentation of multi-disciplinary performances as well as for LVMH fashion shows.
However, it is Gehry’s architetural coup showcased in the Bois de Boulogne which is the subject of admiration. By creating a glass tribute to his Guggenheim Bilbao, the 85 year old Gehry continues to push himself relentlessly forward, as Picasso and Wright did late in their careers; ergo the museum’s opening is timed to coincide with the first European retrospective of Frank Gehry’s work at the Centre Pompidou. You could call it a 21st-century take on the Grand Palais, a Crystal Palace in the middle of an explosion or a collection of gargantuan and complex glass sails, but it will not leave you indifferent.
“The building was to be the first artistic act of the foundation.” said Jean-Paul Claverie, who joined LVMH as a special adviser to Arnault after working under Jack Lang in the French Ministry of Culture.
Exhibiting vast and monumental curves of steel and timber, the framework seems to evoke elements of Russian Constructivism and an ancient church designed to merge harmoniously with the late 19th century park and to house exceptional worksof art. Thus, the building is muscular as it is delicate, culminating in sumptuous glass forms, which are pieces of architecture in themselves. A far cry from the conventional approach to glass surfaces, Gehry has developed a revolutionary way of fashioning this material that makes it possible to curve, in an individualised way and to the nearest
millimetre, each of the 3,600 panes in the twelve glass sails that give the structure itsvolume.
Gehry has often been accused, of making architecture that overwhelms art, but, throughout Arnault’s passion project, art will be shown in straightforward rooms that just happen to be part of an utterly sensuous building, one that only heightens the intensity of the art within its strong structure and soft curves.
Moreover, like its spectacular echo, the Eiffel Tower, the project faced substantial opposition initially, its construction being halted by a court order in 2011. The antagonists objected to Gehry’s structure encroaching on the peace of Jardin d’Acclimatation, the nearby children’s park. However, the French Senate later voted to allow it to resume. Thus, this fall, Paris will welcome a new marriage of cultural ambition and private enterprise in name of the Fondation Louis Vuitton.
