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‘Glass ship’ Vuitton museum opens in Paris

Emerging from the woods at the edge of Paris like a glass ship, the hyper-modern Louis Vuitton art museum will be inaugurated on Monday, kicking off an art-filled week in the French capital.

'Glass ship' Vuitton museum opens in Paris
The Louis Vuitton art museum, which takes the form of a sailboat amongst the trees of the Bois de Boulogne, consists of twelve huge sails in glass. Photo: Bertrand Guay/AFP

Emerging from the woods at the edge of Paris like a glass ship, the hyper-modern Louis Vuitton art museum was inaugurated on Monday, kicking off an art-filled week in the French capital.

French President Francois Hollande hailed architect Frank Gehry's "fabulous idea" of the futuristic building at a glitzy inauguration also expected to be attended by Prince Albert of Monaco, US fashion matriarch Anna Wintour and Chanel's artistic director Karl Lagerfeld.

A transparent cloud of 12 glass sails billows around the museum's main building – referred to by the architect as "the iceberg" – which sits above a sunken lake on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne park.

The official unveiling of the Louis Vuitton Foundation sets off a busy art week in Paris which will be capped by the reopening of the Picasso museum after an extensive five-year renovation.

The flurry of cultural activity has been hailed by the city as proof that Paris still has an edge among the world's art capitals.

However the week began with controversy after a sculpture erected on the ritzy Place Vendome was vandalised this weekend amid outrage – and mirth – over its resemblance to a sex toy.

Hollande weighed in on the incident, saying he sided with American artist Paul McCarthy, 69, who ultimately decided not to reinstall the giant inflatable sculpture called "The Tree"

"France always sides with artists, as do I with Paul McCarthy whose work was sullied," said the president.

"Paris has been and will always be an old lady. But she is a magnificent old dame, sparkling, insolent, even audacious, whose history is intimately linked to art," wrote an editorialist in the Parisian daily newspaper.

"And the beautiful lady is not afraid to be scandalous… she still knows how to seduce," the article said, referring to the outrage over McCarthy's work, and the art-rich week ahead.

'Cultural calling of France'

A decade in the making, the impressive Louis Vuitton Foundation museum will be inaugurated a week before its official opening to the public.

The private contemporary art museum was financed by Bernard Arnault, who heads up the LVMH luxury goods empire and whose net worth is estimated at almost $30 billion (23 billion euros) by Forbes.

The foundation was designed by 85-year-old architect Frank Gehry who wanted to "design, in Paris, a magnificent vessel symbolizing the cultural calling of France".

"It is a very unusual building. I have never designed anything exactly like it," Gehry said on the foundation's website, which describes it as "an iconic building for the 21st century".

A transparent cloud of 12 glass sails billows around the main building, referred to by the architect as "the iceberg", which sits above a sunken lake on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne park.

The architect says he was inspired by the lightness of late 19th-century glass and garden architecture.

"It is a very unusual building. I have never designed anything exactly like it," Gehry said on the foundation's website, which describes it as "an iconic building for the 21st century".

Gehry is best known for designing the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles and the Guggenheim Museum building in Bilbao, Spain.

The Paris building was highly controversial and parliament had to pass a special law allowing for it to be built after local groups wanting to preserve the park's character won a court battle that blocked construction.

Finally, Picasso

Aside from the foundation's glitzy inauguration by President Francois Hollande, the FIAC contemporary art fair also gets under way on Thursday, with 26 countries displaying art in 191 galleries at the Grand Palais museum.

And to cap off the week, the Picasso Museum, which houses one of the world's most extensive collections of the Spanish master's work, reopens on Saturday after five years of renovation engulfed in controversy.

The museum's president Anne Baldessari was sacked mid-renovation after a public spat with staff, a move which angered the painter's son Claude Picasso who said he was "scandalised and very worried" about the future of the museum.

The price tag for the refurbishment of the 17th-century baroque mansion in Paris's historic Marais quarter also shot up amid the delays.

The final bill now stands at 52 million euros, 22 million euros higher than the original budget, due to changes in the scope of the work.

Putting the squabbles in the past, the museum is now ready to unveil around 5,000 paintings, drawings, sculptures, ceramics, photographs and documents.

Previously only a fraction of these could be displayed at any one time, but the museum's exhibition space was more than doubled to 3,800 square metres (41,000 square feet) during the renovation.

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ART

African-born director’s new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

One of the rare African-born figures to head a German cultural institution, Bonaventure Ndikung is aiming to highlight post-colonial multiculturalism at a Berlin arts centre with its roots in Western hegemony.

African-born director's new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

The “Haus der Kulturen der Welt” (House of World Cultures), or HKW, was built by the Americans in 1956 during the Cold War for propaganda purposes, at a time when Germany was still divided.

New director Ndikung said it had been located “strategically” so that people on the other side of the Berlin Wall, in the then-communist East, could see it.

This was “representing freedom” but “from the Western perspective”, the 46-year-old toldĀ AFP.

Now Ndikung, born in Cameroon before coming to study in Germany 26 years ago, wants to transform it into a place filled with “different cultures of the world”.

The centre, by the river Spree, is known locally as the “pregnant oyster” due to its sweeping, curved roof. It does not have its own collections but is home to exhibition rooms and a 1,000-seat auditorium.

It reopened in June after renovations, and Ndikung’s first project “Quilombismo” fits in with his aims of expanding the centre’s offerings.

The exhibition takes its name from the Brazilian term “Quilombo”, referring to the communities formed in the 17th century by African slaves, who fled to remote parts of the South American country.

Throughout the summer, there will also be performances, concerts, films, discussions and an exhibition of contemporary art from post-colonial societies across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania.

‘Rethink the space’

“We have been trying to… rethink the space. We invited artists to paint walls… even the floor,” Ndikung said.

And part of the “Quilombismo” exhibition can be found glued to the floor -African braids laced together, a symbol of liberation for black people, which was created by Zimbabwean artist Nontsikelelo Mutiti.

According to Ndikung, African slaves on plantations sometimes plaited their hair in certain ways as a kind of coded message to those seeking to escape, showing them which direction to head.

READ ALSO: Germany hands back looted artefacts to Nigeria

His quest for aestheticism is reflected in his appearance: with a colourful suit and headgear, as well as huge rings on his fingers, he rarely goes unnoticed.

During his interview with AFP, Ndikung was wearing a green scarf and cap, a blue-ish jacket and big, sky-blue shoes.

With a doctorate in medical biology, he used to work as an engineer before devoting himself to art.

In 2010, he founded the Savvy Gallery in Berlin, bringing together art from the West and elsewhere, and in 2017 was one of the curators of Documenta, a prestigious contemporary art event in the German city of Kassel.

Convinced of the belief that history “has been written by a particular type of people, mostly white and men,” Ndikung has had all the rooms in the HKW renamed after women.

These are figures who have “done something important in the advancement of the world” but were “erased” from history, he added. Among them is Frenchwoman Paulette Nardal, born in Martinique in 1896.

She helped inspire the creation of the “negritude” movement, which aimed to develop black literary consciousness, and was the first black woman to study at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Reassessing history

Ndikung’s appointment at the HKW comes as awareness grows in Germany about its colonial past, which has long been overshadowed by the atrocities committed during the era of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.

Berlin has in recent years started returning looted objects to African countries which it occupied in the early 20th century — Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia and Cameroon.

“It’s long overdue,” said Ndikung.

He was born in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, into an anglophone family.

The country is majority francophone but also home to an anglophone minority and has faced deadly unrest in English-speaking areas, where armed insurgents are fighting to establish an independent homeland.

One of his dreams is to open a museum in Cameroon “bringing together historical and contemporary objects” from different countries, he said.

He would love to locate it in Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s restive Northwest region.

“But there is a war in Bamenda, so I can’t,” he says.

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