Political Issues of the Louvre's Internationalisation

This article focuses on the internationalisation of the Louvre since the 2000s. A flagship of French culture, it is, along with the British Museum in London, the universal museum of reference. The French state, through successive governments, has mobilised the Louvre, that is, the institution, as an intermediary in international agreements. This museum and cultural institution then become a real stakeholder in international relations. Thus, the whole point of our remarks is to analyse the issues and controversies surrounding the close relationship between the Louvre and the French State. The Louvre, a renowned French museum and heritage site, is now multi-spatial. This model responds in part to a request from the French government to perfect the interplay of international influence. The internationalisation of the Louvre is thus understood not as the Louvre's reputation on an international level, but as the use of this heritage in international political strategies. By approaching this case in French international relations, we can first of all question the stakes of the transition from heritage to National Branding. In other words, to understand how in contemporary literature, heritage is transformed not only as a tool to retrace the past of a society, but also how it becomes an emblem that can be mobilised by States to claim a form of legitimacy from other States. The method, which is essentially based on interviews conducted within the framework of these, aims to answer two questions. What does the deterritorialisation of a national heritage such as the Louvre produce regarding international relations between the Louvre, the city of Abu Dhabi and in relations between France and the United Arab Emirates, then the impact that the Louvre Abu Dhabi can have at the local and regional level.

The Universal Museum

This article addresses the long-term impact of colonialism on Europe’s internal structures and on its self-positioning in a global context. Using the 2015 refugee crisis as a focal point and centering the German example, the author explores the complex relationship between memory discourses and visions of Germany’s and Europe’s postunification future. The author argues that the erasure of colonial violence from the continent’s collective memory has a direct, negative impact on its ability to let go of a racialized identity that is in increasing tension with Europe’s actual multiracial and multireligious composition. The article traces this dynamic around the example of the non-European collections in Berlin’s Museum Island and the future Humboldt Forum, conceptualized as the world’s largest “universal museum.” The narratives through which this art is integrated into Europe’s cultural heritage are in stark contrast to those that simultaneously defined the refugees, who arrived from the same region in which the art originated, as fundamentally different and threatening. The narratives intersect in the Multaqa initiative, which offers Arab language tours of Museum Island to refugees, and in the controversy around the site of the Humboldt Forum and the colonial art it is meant to house.

Человек и музей: конфликт интересов

Article is devoted to studying of the conflict which with always exists between museum practice and existential needs of the person. The universal museum activity which extended for the last hundred fifty years is not such positive as it is considered to be. The tendency of a total museumfication of artifacts in museum space, which can be observed today everywhere substantially is obvious sign of trouble new European cultural models. E. Fromm, one of late representatives of psychoanalysis investigating manifestations of negative tendencies in modern reality specifies among other abnormal and destructive symptoms and a necrophilia, and also describes its characteristic signs. Many from aspects of life of the modern person and the practice, which got general support, for example, technologization, aspiration to sterility and purity, a photo boom, etc. — are signs of necrofile anthropological installations. In the museum this is fully implemented “the program of a necrophilia”. It is admissible to claim that this institution contains the conflict: between an obvious necrofile tendency of preservation and mummification of objects and vital intensions of the person. Also the fact that by means of the museum there is a total control of reality in general, and human in particular is important. Through a name, a rubrication, the systems of a signification, practice of division and formation of legitimate groups of objects, investment with sense and history the system of statements is formed. It that also defines life contours and also controls it. This control is exercised by means of discourses, which act as primary instance judging and regulating reality in relation to which the person and human life — are secondary and rigidly limited in the actions and acts.