Thanks to a very peculiar political organization, French presidents, after monarchs, successfully obtained from their subjects that they finance themselves beautiful monuments, to tell the glory of the prince and the nation. Museums are one of the most recent illustrations of this phenomenon.
No other country in the world did have, for so long, monarchs powerful enough to impose their ways to leave so gigantic traces behind. Even if there are, elsewhere, palaces and cathedrals, mosques and temples, no other country pursued this tradition for the last thousand years: those that could afford it ten centuries ago, like Italy or India, can’t afford it anymore; and those that can afford it today, like the Americans, are greatness parvenus, with no memory. Only India, China and Russia could one day be the revenants of a lost power.
François Mitterrand used it immoderately, inaugurating the Orsay Museum desired by its predecessor, creating the Grand Louvre from a museum desired by the last kings of the 18th century, then the Grande Bibliothèque, and other great projects more or less successful, including the Bastille Opera.
Since then, France can no longer afford or have the desire for this kind of excess on its land: French people want libraries and museums in each canton and not in their one and only capital. Their prince glory is not tolerated anymore, and even less wished for.
We indeed moved to another stage, that has begun, even if it remains unspoken, since the term of François Mitterrand’s mandates: if Jacques Chirac did launch the Quai Branly museum, and then the Philarmonie de Paris, probably the last of Paris major public works, France then embarked, without admitting it to itself, into another adventure: exporting its major public works; carrying them out elsewhere, on behalf of others, associating or not the name of France with it.
The Louvre Abu Dhabi is a striking example of this new category of French major public works. After a few others less spectacular, like Angkor renovation, or after French companies’ participation to the construction of new cities, on behalf of political leaders whose moral were often more than suspect.
That could be the last sparkle of a declining country, the last echo of a muted power, in which the newly wealthy treat themselves with decadent services. That could on the contrary be a new way for France to keep its role in the world: be the designer of excessiveness, the manufacturer of greatness, the exporter of glory.
In the world to come, we will always need great projects gathering the greatness of nations with the magic of aesthetic. They will require more and more diverse skills, from art craftsmanship, that must be preserved, to the most advanced material and digital technologies.
France has there a significant field to explore in domains its companies master more than anyone else’s, and that could provide a growth area true to its genius. On condition that all of these professions are protected, taught and valued. And that art, in every shape and form, is recognized as an essential part of the French genius.