Grand Louvre
In the central courtyard, the two octagonal gardens were poorly maintained and surrounded by the parking lots for Finance Ministry employees (to the north) and museum staff (to the south).
[3] But it ran against the considerable power of the Finance Ministry, whose senior bureaucrats had no appetite for abandoning their offices' convenient and highly prestigious Louvre location.
François Mitterrand unexpectedly announced his decision to remove the Finance Ministry from the Louvre and dedicate the entire building to museum use at the end of his first presidential press conference on 24 September 1981.
Pei's proposed concept of a glass pyramid leading to underground spaces at the center of the Louvre, first designed in late 1983 and presented to the public in early 1984,[6] added to the controversy: ostensibly on esthetic and preservationist grounds, but more substantially as a political proxy for attacks on Mitterrand and his "monarchical" leadership style.
The campaign against the pyramid peaked in 1985, with the creation by former Culture Minister Michel Guy [fr] of an association dedicated to that fight (association pour le renouveau du Louvre) and the publication of the polemic Paris mystifié: La grande illusion du Grand Louvre by respected scholars Bruno Foucart [fr], Sébastien Loste et Antoine Schnapper, with a preface by celebrated photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Following the trouncing of Mitterrand's Socialist Party at the 1986 legislative election, the new finance minister Édouard Balladur announced the reversal of the decision to leave the Louvre and took up his office there in mid-April.
But Balladur did not prevail, as other key members of the government, despite being political opponents of Mitterrand, acknowledged the popularity and relevance of the grand Louvre project, which was actively defended by culture minister François Léotard.
This included the renovated remains of the medieval Louvre, namely the external moat, the internal ditch surrounding the circular keep, and a partly preserved gothic room dubbed the salle Saint-Louis.
[11] On 18 November 1993, Mitterrand inaugurated the next major phase of the Grand Louvre plan: the renovated North (Richelieu) Wing in the former Finance Ministry site, the museum's largest single expansion in its entire history, designed by Pei, his French associate Michel Macary, and Jean-Michel Wilmotte.
The new rooms of the Department of Egyptian Antiquities, designed by Atelier de l'Ile, included unprecedented space for Coptic art, e.g. the reconstituted Bawit monastery church from Upper Egypt.
New galleries on the Roman-era Eastern Mediterranean (Orient méditerranéen dans l'Empire Romain), initially included in the successive Grand Louvre plans as "trois antiques" (since they blend objects from the three departments of Egyptian, Oriental, and Classical antiquities), opened in September 2012 together with the new department of Islamic art, whose creation on Jacques Chirac's initiative was not labeled as part of the Grand Louvre.
Biasini retired in July 1987 and was succeeded as EPGL President by Pierre-Yves Ligen (1987–1989) and Jean Lebrat (1989–1998); from 1988 to 1992 he was state secretary (junior minister) in charge of the grands travaux.
[6] In July 1998, the project was substantially completed and the remaining coordination tasks were transferred to the newly created national service now known as the opérateur du patrimoine et des projets immobiliers de la culture [fr].
On Pei's death at age 102 in 2019, his New York Times obituary noted: "Within a few years the pyramid had become an accepted, and generally admired, symbol of a re-energized Paris.
"[13] The American Institute of Architects gave Pei's firm its prestigious Twenty-five Year Award in 2017, noting that the pyramid "now rivals the Eiffel Tower as one of France’s most recognizable architectural icons (...) Pei wove together an unprecedented amount of cultural sensitivity, political acumen, innovation, and preservation skill", with one of the jurors adding that it "established a benchmark for new, modern architecture that enriches an historic setting with integrity and respect for both history and progress.
