ART > Unlocking the Louvre's secrets

LATIMES.COM: WHEN "The Da Vinci Code" opens Friday in the U.S., one of the first places moviegoers will see is the Louvre, where the story starts. Director Ron Howard was allowed to film in the museum, so moviegoers will see the real thing: architect I.M. Pei's Pyramid, the 1,450-foot Grande Galerie and the Salle des États where Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" hangs.

For some viewers, scenes shot there will fly by, but lovers of the Louvre may pause between handfuls of popcorn to admire the museum in the heart of Paris that saw record-breaking numbers of visitors last year.

Since the filming there last spring, the museum has distanced itself from the movie, reflecting the French art establishment's well-known scorn for popular culture and the Louvre's weariness with the phenomenon created by "The Da Vinci Code," Dan Brown's controversial 2003 mystery about the supposed secret history of Christianity. Officials at the museum aren't publicly linking the dramatic increase in visitation — from about 6 million in 2000 to 7.5 million last year — with the novel, even though 57 million copies of the book are in print in 44 languages.

After all, the Louvre is not a movie set. It is a world-famous art gallery and museum of mankind in the surpassingly beautiful abode of French kings, like London's National Gallery, British Museum and Buckingham Palace all rolled into one.

The Louvre has been standing alongside the Seine for more than 800 years, first as a medieval fortress built around 1190 by crusading king Philippe Auguste (Philip II) and then as a rambling royal palace on which a long chain of French artists and architects put their marks. The kings of France were insatiable collectors, so when the palace opened as a museum in 1793, the treasure-trove became the property of the French people.

After the French Revolution, art kept rolling in, acquired through donations, pilferage during the Napoleonic Wars, field work by French archeologists and a now-defunct law that allowed curators to bargain-shop in customs-office basements for artwork barred from exportation.

The Louvre has 300,000 works of art spanning almost 9,000 years of human civilization, including 52 Rubens, 12 Rembrandts and, thanks to the connoisseurship of Francis I in the 16th century, more Da Vincis than Italy (or anyplace else).

"The Louvre is the book in which we learn to reach," French painter Paul Cézanne wrote in a 1905 letter.

The museum today

NOW, there is even more to the museum, largely because of a huge project launched in 1981 by then-French President François Mitterrand. The Grand Louvre, as it is called, put a modern glass pyramid designed by American architect Pei at the center of the classically French building ensemble; doubled exhibition space by opening the northern wing, formerly occupied by the French Finance Ministry; and gave the complex a subterranean shopping mall.

When the $960-million Grand Louvre was first announced, the French protested. It was too expensive and ambitious. Critics scoffed at Pei's pyramid, and journalists dubbed Mitterrand "Ramses II" for the Pharaoh whose building lust is documented in the museum's Egyptian wing.

But the complaints subsided when the Grand Louvre reached completion around 2000. With a new entrance in the middle of the Cour Napoléon, the museum seemed far more user-friendly and Pei's controversial pyramid became a beloved landmark.

The next remarkable thing was the naming of an energetic, open-minded director in 2001. Henri Loyrette was 48 when he took over at the Louvre after running the nearby Musée d'Orsay.

Although saddled with problems pointed out by an embarrassing 2003 government auditor's report — insufficient security, staff laxness and mismanagement of the collections — Loyrette managed to turn things around. Under his stewardship, the Louvre launched an Islamic Arts Department to be housed in a $60-million glass-roofed courtyard, scheduled for completion in 2009, and supported the creation of a satellite museum in the economically depressed northeastern French city of Metz.

Recent restorations of the dazzling 17th century Galerie d'Apollon and Salle des États, home of "The Mona Lisa," were greeted with jubilation. But among jealous guardians of the national patrimony and opponents of privatization, there was also consternation because the projects were paid for by the French oil company Total and by the Nippon Television Network.

Unlike past directors, Loyrette has aggressively sought funding from private sources to augment the museum's resources. In April, he announced the formation of a partnership between the Louvre and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Between 2006 and 2009, the Louvre will lend the High enough art for three special exhibitions, including masterpieces by Raphael and Nicolas Poussin.

Meanwhile, U.S. sponsors of the exhibitions — including Delta, UPS and Coca-Cola — have pledged $6.4 million for refurbishments to the Louvre's collection of 18th century French furniture.

In 2002, Loyrette welcomed the founding of the American Friends of the Louvre, a New York-based nonprofit organization whose mission is to support the museum financially, strengthen French-American cultural ties and improve how the museum addresses the needs of visitors from the U.S. Its current initiatives include English translations of the museum's Web database and installation of panels describing key artworks in English and Spanish.

The society is a new concept at the Louvre, although a similar group has long been active at Versailles. "It never occurred to the Louvre before, but Loyrette is shaking things up," said Christopher Forbes, head of the board of directors of the American Friends of the Louvre. "He represents a new generation of directors, plugged into what's happening at museums worldwide."

Loyrette has been frank about the Louvre's weaknesses, including its lack of American art. That will be remedied in part when "American Artists and the Louvre" opens in June. The special exhibition will present 30 American masterpieces by artists who found inspiration at the Paris museum, including Benjamin West, James McNeill Whistler and Edward Hopper.

It's beginning to sound like America year at the Louvre. Despite strained relations between America and France, a million people from the U.S. visited the museum last year, more than from any other country besides France. Projects with Atlanta's High Museum and the American Friends of the Louvre were partly motivated by a desire to ease contentiousness between the two nations.

Loyrette has also said that his goal is to make visiting the museum more enjoyable. For Americans, especially those visiting for the first time, that may be the most significant of all the director's projects.

With more than 20,000 visitors tramping through the Louvre each day, congestion and the frustration it engenders are almost unavoidable. On a busy morning, the museum is as noisy and crowded as a U.S. airport the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

Although I live four blocks from the museum, I avoided it for months after I moved to Paris in 2004. But I was pleasantly surprised after returning several times last month. There are more ticket machines, crowd control around "The Mona Lisa" has improved, and three other entrances besides the one at the Pyramid have opened (with plans for another underway).

Directional signs and art descriptions for non-French speakers are still lacking, but most staff members speak at least a little English and seem friendlier than when I first visited 20 years ago.

A day pass costs about $10 (coincidentally the price of a movie ticket), although students get in free. Opening hours have been extended, including Wednesday and Friday evenings, when the crowds thin and the din subsides.

Your visit

BUT no matter when you go, it is possible to find yourself suddenly alone in front of the Egyptian Department's 4,500-year-old "Seated Scribe" or climbing the sumptuous Lefuel staircase in the Richelieu wing as only your footsteps break the silence.

The best way to get the most out of a trip to the Louvre is to go with a clear sense of what you plan to accomplish. Most visitors want to see the museum's great masterpieces — the "Mona Lisa," "Winged Victory of Samothrace" and the "Venus de Milo" — which takes about three hours, allowing time for distraction. Others choose to get to know just one of the Louvre's eight departments in depth, a far less exhausting and potentially more rewarding approach.

First, though, take an hour to stroll all the way around the exquisite building ensemble. Gaze at the Grande Galerie overlooking the Seine, a perfect Paris postcard; stand back and admire the magisterial Renaissance colonnade on the museum's eastern facade; cross the Cour Carrée, considered the most perfect architectural space in the Louvre; look west from the Cour Napoléon toward the Tuileries Gardens, the Place de la Concorde, the Champs Élysées and the Arc de Triomphe; see the building's facade reflected on Pei's glass pyramid.

Then tell me the Louvre is just a movie set.