French tycoon wins battle for modern art gem
French luxury goods magnate Francois Pinault plans to restore the 17th-century Customs House of Venice |
And it is a battle that, unless there is a late last-minute hitch, the French luxury goods magnate Francois Pinault, whose business empire includes Christie's, Gucci and Yves St Laurent, will win.
Venice's heritage committee last week announced that the bid by the Guggenheim Foundation has been sidelined and Pinault's $35 million plan to restore the 17th-century Customs House at the mouth of Venice's Grand Canal and hang hundreds of modern masterpieces on its walls is now the only contender. The final terms of the agreement are being negotiated.
"The French have seen off the Americans," said one commentator close to the heritage committee. "The classic has triumphed over the modern, the Old Continent over the New World."
The Customs House, one of the best-known sights in Venice, has stood empty for 30 years. It is featured in paintings by Canaletto, Guardi and Turner. With Pinault's success, it will be the Japanese architect Tadao Ando who will turn the 5,000-square-meter site into a rotating display drawn from the French businessman's personal collection of more than 2,500 masterworks. The Guggenheim Foundation, which already operates one museum in the city, wanted Zaha Hadid, the Iraqi-British architect, to create a less traditional "center of contemporary art".
"We trusted that the city would share our vision of a dynamic museum but we were mistaken," said Philip Rylands, director of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.
Pinault had been looking for a museum site since he failed after spending $16 million to obtain rapid planning permission for a project on an island in the middle of the Seine in Paris.
A five-member panel of City of Venice officials assessed the two competing bids but had trouble deciding between them, even suggesting at one stage that the Guggenheim and Pinault work together. However, the committee was apparently not impressed by the support of the Veneto regional authority, run by the center-right coalition of the former Italian president Sylvio Berlusconi, for the Guggenheim's project. Venice's mayor is a left-winger.
"It has all been very polite on the surface, but behind it has been a real cloak and dagger battle, with politics, money, art and egos all getting embroiled," said one local journalist. "It has been like a bad opera at times."
This week, there will be further celebrations at Pinault's Paris headquarters. The 70-year-old businessman, the fifth-richest man in France, has also been nominated for the Legion d'Honneur by his close friend and outgoing President Jacques Chirac.
In Venice, Pinault loyalists are scheduling their own celebrations. Jean-Jacques Aillagon, the former French culture minister who directs the museum that Pinault already runs in the Italian city, said he and his boss "were happy about this Italo-French victory and honored that Venice had offered them such a mark of their civic confidence".
It is hoped that the new museum will be open in time if not for Pinault junior's wedding, then for the Venice Bienniale of 2009.
The Guardian
(China Daily 04/17/2007 page19)
