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  3. Until recently, the Louvre, France’s iconic museum wouldn’t have dreamed of rolling out the red carpet for international partygo

Until recently, the Louvre, France’s iconic museum wouldn’t have dreamed of rolling out the red carpet for international partygo

admin2011-03-10  48
问题   Until recently, the Louvre, France’s iconic museum wouldn’t have dreamed of rolling out the red carpet for international partygoers, however rich, avowing food and drink to be served in a gallery. Fund raisers may be standard practice at American museums, but then no American museum is like the Louvre which has served as the state-funded bastion of high culture in France for much of its 800-year history. A succession of French Kings built their art collections there, and in 1793, shortly after the French Revolution, it was turned into a museum that is now easily the most popular in the world. Last year it drew 8.3 million visitors-more than a million of them American.
   But times are changing, state funds are tight, and the Louvre has an ambitious director named Henri Loyrette, who is seeking to pull the venerable institution into a new era. Tapping rich people around the globe for funding is just one of the changes he’s brought about since becoming director in 2001. Armed with a vision of the Louvre as a beacon of culture that is both accessible and global, he has set in motion a dramatic opening to the outside world. So far, that includes signing a deal to create a Louvre museum in Abu Dhabi—a franchising concept pioneered by the Guggenheim—and staging exhibitions of the museum’s treasures in such places as Kobe, Japan, and Macau. U.S. museums are particularly benefiting, and not just the usual Louvre partners like New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Loyrette set up an unprecedented three-year partnership with the High Museum in Atlanta and has sent exhibitions to cities like Seattle and Oklahoma City. Most controversially, he has invited contemporary artists to exhibit at the Louvre and even decorated it—provoking howls of protests from French detractors.
   Loyrette, 56, says his goal is not to be controversial just for the sake of it. But he insists, "In a house like this, you need to open the windows. We hadn’t aired for a long time. " Some of what he’s doing is experimental, he acknowledges.
   There are some limits. The Louvre still takes its public service mission very seriously, and its lending policy isn’t limitless either: earlier this year, the Louvre pulled out of a show that a private promoter was mounting in Verona, Italy. The Louvre would have received $6.4 million for its participation, but the idea of working on a commercial basis with a private operator rather than a museum caused some concern among curators. Cason Thrash also ran into restrictions on what she could do at her fund-raising party. Still she gushes about Loyrette. "Henri’s a visionary. He totally gets it," she says. "It’s time for the Louvre to spread its wings. "
   Not everyone shares her enthusiasm. Just ask Marc Fumaroli, who chairs the Society of Friends of the Louvre, a 3-year-old French association that helps finance some of the museum’s acquisitions. With 70,000 members, most of whom pay a $100 annual subscription, it still packs some clout. Furmaroli is frank about the criticism. There’s particular concern about the way the museum is sending out its treasures. "Some think there is excessive exportation" is how he puts it, although he acknowledges that "as one of the biggest museums in the world, the Louwe cannot escape the consequences of globalization. "
   The other big complaint is about the contemporary art. Fumaroli wrote an indignant article about the biggest show to date. He dismissed it as pantalonnades-pantomime.
   If you ask Genevieve Bresc-bautier, the crnsty chief curator of the Louvre’s sculpture department, what has changed in the Loyrette era, she’ll grumble a bit about the heavier load of administration that comes the way of the museum’s seven departments. She’s also not convinced that appointing department heads for just three years at a time is a smart move. (Until Loyrette came ahmg, they were appointed fro" life.) But then she’ll start to talk about the "very expensive" $3.7 million Austrian bust that the Louvre was able to buy in New York for her department and the ambitious exhibition of French bronzes she’ll be putting on later this year, not to mention the restoration budget, which is "incomparably bigger than it was a decade ago. "  
What is the main idea of this passage?
选项 A、The Louvre benefits from fund-raising activities.
B、Loyrette has promoted Louvre into a world-famous museum.
C、The Louvre is influenced by globalization.
D、the Louvre is mixing business with culture.
答案D
解析 主旨题。[A]只是文中涉及的一个方面，不全面；[B]的内容本身就错误；[C]只是文章细节，不全面；本文主要介绍以Henri Loyrette为首的管理层对卢浮宫进行各种改革(主要是引入商业元素)以筹措经费，以及人们对这些改革的评价，故答案为[D]。
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