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# Six months ago I wrote about the warm-up exercises performed in the Louvre before "The Battle of Arbela", and now it has emerged that the Louvre and four major Parisian museums will take part in the events of the Olympic Games
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/polgoda-nazad-ia-pisal-pro-razminku-kotoruiu-delaiut-v-luvre-pered-bitvoi-pri-arbellakh-a-seichas-stalo-izvestno-chto-luvr-i-chetyre-krupnykh-parizhskikh-muzeia-pouchastvuiut-v-meroprii/
- Published: 2024-04-28T06:32:33.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:33:55.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Museums, Observations, Society, Paris

Six months ago I wrote about the warm-up exercises performed in the Louvre before "The Battle of Arbela", and now it has emerged that the Louvre and four major Parisian museums will take part in the events of the Olympic Games. The Louvre, the Orsay, the Orangerie and the Centre Pompidou will attempt to integrate themselves into the programme of Olympic events.

The least the museums can offer is sport-themed tours and the addition of suitably themed exhibits to their displays. In my view, one might well stop there.

But a sense of proportion is not the most sought-after quality of our age. Everyone wants everything, and at once, and in greater quantity, regardless of whether it is appropriate.

Guests of the Games will watch skating tricks performed before the Winged Victory of Samothrace and BMX jumps in the corridors of the Galerie d'Apollon (for the outstanding architectural monument of the age of Louis XIV has, after all, been sorely lacking in bicycles). Break-dancing will be performed before masterpieces of Italian painting, though what on earth has one to do with the other? Basketball will be played before the glass pyramid: but might it not be better to cheer on the young athletes somewhere on the outskirts of Paris, in a poor district, and build them a splendid court while one is about it? A skatepark will appear on the grounds of the Centre Pompidou. The Orsay and the Orangerie, too, could quite comfortably have joined in the general jubilation over the achievements of professional sport without a dance programme, could they not? That cycling races and a marathon will pass through the Tuileries is, perhaps, the least of the evils.

I do not know how the director of the Louvre, Laurence des Cars, was persuaded to embroil herself in this outrageous folly. You will agree that there are other ways of building bridges between art and sport, although the purpose of doing so is not entirely clear: the two entities exist perfectly well on their own. It is hardly likely that martial contests in the hallowed halls of a museum, where on ordinary days even a superfluous movement is impermissible, will draw admirers of quattrocento painting to sports apparatus, or vice versa.

I do not approve of this news. It is a dreadful practice, the reduction of cultural institutions to the rank of entertainments, slyly passed off as raising the base level of the consumer to high culture. Next there will be only a Beyoncé concert in the Vatican.