While describing the final phase of the Louvre Atlanta project, Michael Shapiro, director of the High Museum of Art, evoked the travels of Huckleberry Finn on the Mississippi.

“It’s been a fantastic ride,” he told GlobalAtlanta in mid-June about the three-year relationship that brought nearly 500 works of art from the Louvre Museum in Paris across the Atlantic Ocean to Atlanta.

The project closes down in September having drawn to the High more than 1.2 million visitors from all corners of the Southeast U.S. and beyond in what Dr. Shapiro calls “the most underserved market in the United States.”

The final phase of the project is titled “The Louvre and the Masterpiece,” which includes 91 works spanning 4,000 years and examines how taste and connoisseurship change over time.

This phase is just the latest part of the “adventure” for Henri Loyrette, the Louvre’s president and director, and his travel mate Dr. Shapiro, who said that he hopes further collaborations will take place between them in the future.

“We had no checklist,” Dr. Shapiro said. “We wanted to partner and we wanted to show the history of the Louvre with all of the departments participating.”

The project opened in October 2006 with exhibitions focused on the “Kings as Collectors,” showing objects that had been in the Louvre while the French kings resided there prior to its days as a museum.

The second year had objects dating back to ancient times, as well as those owned by Napoleon Bonaparte’s wife Josephine and masterworks from the “Enlightment,” including sculptures by Jean Antoine Houdon.

The last phase includes prints and drawings from the museum’s Rothschild collection, the 1841 painting “Pandemonium” by the British artist John Martin and four cylinder seals from ancient times – two of which are considered masterpieces and two which are not.

“Many have seen works of art that they would have had no other opportunity to see,” Dr. Shapiro said. “Louvre Atlanta gave people a sense of civic pride – it was not something that went away in 12 weeks or 16 weeks.”

The visitors have had the opportunity to register their preferences on an electronic board near the exit of the exhibition. Though the results are far from conclusive, they show that the visitors who registered their views mostly preferred works of religious significance.

As of last October, the 16th century Italian painter Lorenzo Lotto’s “Christ Carrying the Cross” was the favorite. A basin known as the “Baptistery of Saint Louis,” which dates back of the second quarter of the 14th century by Muhammad ibn Al-Zayn ranked second.

Ranked third was the statuette of a worshipper bearing an offering, which dates back to 1500-1200 B.C. and is originally from Iran. Antoine-Louis Barye’s 19th century sculture of “Lion with Serpent,” which also is a favorite of Dr. Shapiro, was fourth.

“Character Head” by the German 18th century sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt was fifth. “The Card-Sharp with Ace of Diamonds” by 17th century French painter Georges de La Tour was sixth.

“The Astronomer” by the 17th Dutch painter Jan Vermeer was seventh; the portrait of Baldassare Castiglione by 16th century Italian painter, Raphael Sanzio, eighth.

Ranked ninth was “Saint Matthew and the Angel” by 17th century Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rinj, and a chalice dating to 1200 A.D. from Limoges, France, tenth.

With two months to go, Dr. Shapiro already was beginning to speak of the project in the past tense. A scheduled meeting at the Louvre with the president and staff would assess the curatorial and public relations challenges of the project, he said.

“We made people realize that we could reach higher in terms of arts and culture,” he said when asked to assess the significance of the project.

But more specifically, he added, “At the High, we are convinced that the future is in the area of partnership.”

Calling the High, an “innovative collaborator,” he said that he was confident the museum could go almost anywhere in the world now and develop partnerships with other institutions.

“We want to be the best partner in the country,” he added. “We are in the most underserved part of the country and our motivation is stronger. We have this tremendous record from the time of the Olympics.”

During the 1996 Summer Olympics, which were held in Atlanta, the High featured an exhibition of works from around the world. Most recently, the High has on loan from the Museum of Modern Art in New York paintings by Claude Monet.

And for Dr. Shapiro personally, it has been a creative adventure starting with a conceptual undertaking that took on an unprecedented shape of its own.

 To learn more about the High Museum, go to www.high.org 

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