The Louvre’s New Islamic Galleries Bring Riches to Light

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Carol Vogel

The new space consists of ground- and lower-ground-level interiors topped by a golden, undulating roof

FRANCE---The Louvre’s new Islamic galleries bring riches to light. Ten years in the making, the $125 million project, which opens on Saturday, has been financed in part by the French government, along with Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, who gave the Louvre $20 million toward the galleries, the largest single monetary gift ever given to the museum. Their opening comes 10 months after the Metropolitan Museum of Art introduced its own new galleries dedicated to the arts of Islam. The Met, in an effort to avoid defining the collection solely in terms of religion, chose an unusually long title for its spaces, “The Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia.” The Louvre, on the other hand, has taken the exact opposite approach, calling its galleries simply, “Islam.” [link]