Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, November 25, 1993                   TAG: 9311250139
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 9   EDITION: HOLIDAY 
SOURCE: MARILYN AUGUST ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: PARIS                                 LENGTH: Medium

REMODELING OF THE LOUVRE HAS BEEN A HIGH-TECH WORK OF ART

With the official inauguration of the new Richelieu wing by President Francois Mitterrand, the Louvre doubles in size to 645,000 square feet and adds 25 percent more artwork to its galleries.

Its storerooms have been emptied to fill a showcase for sculpture, painting, tapestries, art objects and Islamic art.

Journalists got a sneak preview last week of the Richelieu wing, home to a century of French finance ministries.

Two hundred years after France's first democratic leaders transformed Louis XVI's royal abode into a museum, more than 30,000 treasures have been brought into the world of the living.

The graceful Marly horses have moved from their precarious, polluted perch on the Champs-Elysees to the glass-roofed interior courtyard where bureaucrats once parked their cars.

Visitors who remember the old Louvre as a dusty maze of dark galleries crammed with paintings hung floor to ceiling will be delighted by the new one.

The floor plan is logical and clearly marked, so visitors no longer get lost so easily. Items are identified and explained with historical and biographical information on plastic sheets printed in several languages.

A subtle blend of natural and artificial light pioneered by Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei combines with a feeling of spaciousness to enhance the tiniest antique silver spoon to the largest Maximillien tapestry.

"The claustrophobic feeling I used to get is completely gone now," noted Carole Pinto, an American visitor tagging along with the press. "The natural light really gives added beauty to the art work."

Yet there's no losing sight of the royal palace.

Sweeping, chiseled staircases, vaulted ceilings, high cathedral windows, marble floors and sculpted facades are constant reminders of the Louvre's colorful history that began in 1200 when King Philippe Auguste feared invasion from his Norman enemies.

Two centuries later and twice embellished, it housed Charles V's rare manuscripts, priceless jewels and tapestries; Francois I later added paintings by Titian, Raphael and Da Vinci.

But it was Napoleon's demand for a tribute in art from his far-flung conquests, including the pink Carousel Arch of Triumph hauled from Italy, that made the Louvre the wonder it is.

"I came to the Louvre for the first time in 1951," recalled Pei, whose glass pyramid in the courtyard opened in 1989 as the museum's new entrance. "But what I saw in those days is just a tiny fraction of what visitors will see today."

Highlights include a new setting for the museum's priceless Islamic art collection.

The famed 26-ton Khorsabad bulls get spectacular lodgings in a courtyard designed to evoke the exterior walls of the Assyrian palace for which they were built in the 8th century B.C.

One floor up, the gilded Salon Napoleon III opens to the public for the first time with an ensemble of plush, red-velvet Empire furniture in mint condition.

Also on display are 12 huge tapestries of hunting scenes so large they have not been hung together since they were created for the Luxemburg Palace nearly 200 years ago.

The top floor includes a 135-foot gallery for Rubens' portraits depicting the life of Marie de Medicis, along with three taken out of storage and hung for the first time.

As the most ambitious and costly of Mitterrand's regal projects for Paris, the project has enjoyed wide support despite nay-sayers who warned the Louvre would become "an annex to Disneyland."

Though Culture Minister Jacques Toubon called the Louvre, "an unquestionable success," he predicted no such projects - the costs ran 5 million to 6 million francs - for the future.