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LIKE NO OTHER FRENCH ARCHITECTURAL STRUCTURE, the Louvre has crystallized discourse on city space and national power for over a thousand years. From its origins as a medieval fortress depicted in medieval Books of Hours, towering over the peasants who work the fields of the agricultural land that then surrounded it, the Louvre has evolved into a tourist site and a postmodern logo that has been sold to other museums around the world, including recent, controversial licensing of its name to a museum in Abu Dhabi, demonstrating the building's enduring image as embodiment of cultural prestige and power. In traditional works on the Louvre, this history- of both transformation and permanence-is often relegated to the presence of anecdotal quotations. The present project, the first of its kind, makes such questions central to its inquiry.
The articles of this volume trace the evolving connection between art and politics as articulated by the Louvre as physical site and productive concept by bringing together perspectives from art and architectural history, literature, and cultural studies. What emerges transhistorically is a pattern of constant interaction that collects and legitimizes forms of authority. Rather than a history of the Louvre, we practice...