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The world's biggest museum, the Louvre, is to open up to the United States with a series of American art exhibitions and an unprecedented loan of scores of its works to the southern city of Atlanta, officials said Tuesday.
The move had resulted from the Louvre's well-established relations with the US as well as "the new artistic map of the United States," the Louvre's director Henri Loyrette told a news conference.
He added that one in every seven visitor to the Louvre was American, accounting for some one million visitors last year, and regretted the total absence of American art from the museum apart from three paintings.
The highlight of the new collaboration with the US is a deal reached in 2003 with the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, which will get underway in October.
Under the 14-million-euro (18 million dollar) agreement, works from the Louvre will be temporarily loaned to the Atlanta museum over the next three years to be exhibited in the Anne Cox wing, a new extension designed by the architect Renzo Piano, who also designed the Pompidou Centre in Paris.
Each year, a major 11-month exhibition will retrace the history of the Louvre's collections, and will be supported by themed exhibitions lasting some three months.
This year some 142 works, including paintings, drawings and sculptures will go on show in Atlanta among them works by Raphael, Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin and Nicolas Poussin.
The American season will be launched in Paris on June 14 with an exhibition "American artists and the Louvre".
Organised in partnership with the Chicago-based Terra Foundation for American Art, the exhibition which will last until September 18 will show how the Louvre was a source of inspiration for US artists.
A series of seminars will also be held from June 15 to October 20 looking at art and politics in 18th and 19th century America. And in the autumn award-winning author Toni Morrison will be invited to hold a series of debates with contemporary artists.
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AFPEntertainment-arts-France-US
AFP 041800 GMT 04 06
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