The Painted Word

The Louvre has recently agreed to take the same path as the Guggenheim and franchise its name to Abu Dhabi developers for $520 million. For “only” $747 million the Louvre will also include management advice, art loans and special exhibitions. The total price of this deal is said to be $1.3 billion with the deal to last 30 years.

But is the Louvre name really worth that much money? And will another Louvre really bring tourists to Abu Dhabi?

Let’s do some math here.

The $1.3 billion total price paid over 30 years would average to $43.3 million a year. Now the real Louvre in Paris drew roughly 8.35 million last year, something that I would guess Abu Dhabi couldn’t match.

Assuming this Louvre draws that many visitors (which is a VERY generous estimate itself). Abu Dhabi would be paying roughly $5.20 per visitor. I would guess somewhere around half of that many visitors would be a fair estimate, given how popular the Louvre is in Paris. This would mean that Abu Dhabi would be paying $10.40 per visitor.

And that’s cost per visitor not actually factoring in other costs that go into a museum (building construction costs??).

While this seems like a steep price to pay the Louvre, rising art prices also factored greatly into this deal:

“If the emirates want to have access to Western art, why don’t they buy some?” asked retired Louvre curator Alcouffe. “We can counsel them in buying — curators do it all the time. We don’t need to expatriate our works.”
But therein lies the problem, according to Abu Dhabi officials. They say that charging into the world’s commercial art market armed with billions of dollars would jolt already stratospheric art prices.”

That’s true, with the price of art rising, 1.3 Billion dollars could not buy enough of the type of important art that the Louvre would loan them to fill a museum these days; probably only enough to fill a room or so.

What this shows is that Abu Dhabi is extremely set on bringing world class art to the middle east, first with the Guggenheim and now with the Louvre. It seems at $1.3 Billion, despite the high price paid; this is probably the best deal for them.

I think that with the trends in pricing of original paintings going skyward each an every day, this type of arrangement will be seen much more often. It’s really a win win situation for both sides, as long as the Louvre or other museums aren’t loaning too many of their best works away.

Maybe Abu Dhabi should just buy reproductions instead?

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