Branding Art Museums Expand

The Louvre and the Georges Pompidou Center are preparing to open branches outside Paris. This follows the international branding route chartered by New York's empire-building Guggenheim Museum, which has created the acclaimed Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain and in Venice, Berlin and Las Vegas and is now looking to plant its flag in Brazil, Mexico, Taiwan and Hong Kong. The Louvre will open a $100 million satellite in the northern French city of Lens in 2009 and will occupy a new annex at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta for three years from 2006. In contrast, while the Pompidou will inaugurate a new $68 million branch in the northeastern French city of Metz in 2007, it is also looking beyond France. It aspires to a new museum of modern art in Hong Kong, part of a proposed development known as the West Kowloon Cultural District. Guggenheim, has also signed up with a group bidding for this West Kowloon contract. For the full story - click the title Irish Art