LVMH Taps Gehry for New Paris Museum

Bernard Arnault, chairman of the Paris-based luxury goods conglomerate LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy), recently unveiled plans for the Louis Vuitton Foundation for Creation, a new museum for contemporary art in Paris designed by Frank Gehry. Suzanne Page, outgoing director of the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, will be its artistic director. The $127-million structure will replace a disused bowling alley in the Jardin d'Acclimatation, the children's area of the sprawling Bois de Boulogne park. The museum will house LVMH's corporate collections as well as spaces for temporary exhibitions.

Gehry's design calls for a multistoried structure whose undulating form is completely covered in glass. Adding to Paris's wealth of glass-enclosed landmarks such as the Grand Palais and the Muscle d'Orsay, as well as I.M. Pei's Louvre pyramid and Jean Nouvel's Cartier Foundation, the Gehry's design represents something of a departure for the architect whose signature buildings, including the Guggenheim Bilbao and Disney Hall in Los Angeles, feature titanium cladding. This is the second major Paris commission for Gehry, whose previous Paris project was the ill-fated American Center, which closed in the early 1990s and remained vacant until it was revamped and reopened as the French Cinematheque in 1996. Endorsed by the French culture minister and the mayor of Paris, the new project is scheduled for completion in 2009 or early 2010, pending approval from the Paris city council.

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