To begin its 230th anniversary year, the Louvre is welcoming 20 contemporary artists, all aged under 40 and with links to Paris. They propose a ‘Louvre Look’ as part of a visual art project associating the Paris museum and its partner institution, the Louvre-Lens. Each of the 20 contributions takes the form of a 3:30-minute video. The project is presented at an avant-première screening in the Michel Laclotte Auditorium on 26 January 2023, then one video a week will be posted on the Louvre’s Instagram account.

At the Louvre’s invitation, 20 contemporary figures from every creative sphere will propose their own view of the museum. Whether they come from the world of painting, poetry, literature, fashion, experimental music, cinema, installation or video, they all have a deep personal connection with the Louvre, its collections, its visitors, its life…
This unprecedented programme brings together contributions by Ivan Argote, Hicham Berrada, Anton Bialas and Kamilya Kuspanova, Mykki Blanco and Dachi-Giorgi Garuchava, Bianca Bondi, Guillaume Bresson, Jacob Bromberg, Théo Casciani, Pan Daijing, David Douard, Eliza Douglas, Jennifer Douzenel, Mimosa Echard, Miles Greenberg, Rafik Greiss, Marie Jacotey, Christelle Oyiri, Ariana Papademetropoulos, Edgar Sarin and Marine Serre.

According to the Louvre’s President-Director Laurence des Cars, ‘The views of these 20 artists reflect original and highly personal yet universal ways of responding to our collections. They show us different ways of looking at the Louvre and new, contemporary ways of creating with the museum, confirming its role as a contemporary site of art.’

All the artists involved in the project have already achieved prominence in their own field. Whatever their backgrounds and artistic practices, they have made their mark, asserting themselves as important contributors to contemporary creativity, and they have all made the museum into their muse.

This innovative project takes the form of 20 videos, each about 3:30 minutes long. It gave the artists an opportunity to define their own perception of the Louvre. From splendid staircases to marble floors, from the Cour Khorsabad to the galleries of Flemish paintings, from the Salle des Caryatides to the galleries of medieval French sculpture, they each created a work reflecting their personal perspective across the entire museum.

Together, the artists – working with film crews or with their own mobile phones, by night or during visiting hours, using digital resources or focusing on their personal connection to the works – have created a polyphonic portrait of the Louvre, as life and audiences have returned to the museum.

Nowadays, anyone can use video to be part of the museum, using a mobile phone to photograph or film. It is a medium used both by the general public and by some of the greatest film-makers, who have used it to show their own view of the Louvre. To continue in this tradition, the museum will present the 20 artists’ videos at a public screening on 26 January, during the International Art Film Festival (Journées Internationales du Film d’Art), whose guest of honour is the celebrated artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. In addition to this event at the Paris museum, the artists’ creations will also be presented at the Louvre-Lens, bolstering the collaboration between the two museums.

The project will also be presented to the public through weekly videos posted on the Louvre’s digital platforms (including its Instagram account, which has some 5 million subscribers). The videos will eventually live their life in the hands of the artists who created them.

‘Louvre Looks’ follows on from an invitation extended to a number of contemporary creative figures (such as Candida Höfer, Jenny Holzer, Anselm Kiefer, Martin Szekely, Yan Pei-Ming), who have collaborated with the Louvre in the past, to choose and comment on an artwork on the Louvre’s Instagram. Both programmes expand and feature the community of the museum’s artist fellow-travellers, who have participated in  the Louvre’s artistic life over the course of the past twenty years. They highlight the Louvre’s unique status as the home of artists – as it has been known since the 18th century, when it housed artists’ studios.