ATLANTA, GA.- The High Museum of Art’s unprecedented three-year partnership with the Musée du Louvre launched last October to critical acclaim, continuing the High’s longstanding strategy of collaborating with international institutions to bring great art to Atlanta. Since the opening of “Louvre Atlanta’s” first two exhibitions, the High has welcomed more than 171,000 visitors; almost 33,000, or 19 percent, have been schoolchildren, and the Museum already has reservations for at least 28,000 additional students in the coming months. In addition, since the opening of “Louvre Atlanta” the High’s membership has grown to more than 49,000 households, which ranks in the top 10 among American art museums.

A central component of the partnership is the collaborative scholarship on works from the Louvre’s collections. Exhibition research headed by a joint curatorial team from both institutions has revealed new discoveries. For example, as a direct result of research for “The King’s Drawings,” a ground-breaking exhibition that examines the collecting of drawings under Kings Louis XIV, Louis XV and Louis XVI, Louvre curator Catherine Loisel was able to attribute the previously unattributed drawing “Portrait of a Man” to the 17th-century Italian master Agostino Carracci. A substantial number of drawings in “The King’s Drawings” are being shown for the first time as a direct result of study and research for the exhibition in Atlanta.

“Atlanta and the Southeast have warmly embraced our partnership with the Louvre—and we are thrilled that so many people throughout the region are coming to view these masterpieces,” said Michael E. Shapiro, the High’s Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr. Director. “Through our collaboration with the Louvre, we are providing our visitors with access to great art, and our exhibition research has revealed remarkable new discoveries that will present these works in a new light for both American and European audiences.”

In preparation for its display this fall as part of the exhibition “The Louvre and the Ancient World,” the Louvre has also begun restoring one of its most important Roman antiquities, “The Tiber,” including new research on the carving techniques used to create it. The conservation of this marble sculpture, along with a set of frescoes depicting the muses from Pompeii (AD 62–79), was facilitated by the High’s partnership with the Louvre. New scholarship also resulted from the day-long interdisciplinary symposium “Raphael, Castiglione and European Courtly Culture,” held in Atlanta in October 2006, which included presentations by a panel of internationally recognized scholars of Italian Renaissance art and the art of Raphael.

The High and the Louvre launched their three-year partnership on October 14, 2006, with the exhibitions “Kings as Collectors,” “The King’s Drawings” and “Faces of History and Myth: Busts from the Musée du Louvre.” A central work in “Kings as Collectors,” Raphael’s “Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione,” is hailed as one of the world’s greatest portraits; this painting, as well as “The King’s Drawings,” will return to Paris on January 28. Replacing Raphael’s portrait is Nicolas Poussin’s “Et in Arcadia Ego,” which goes on view Tuesday, January 30. The exhibition “Decorative Arts of the Kings” will open in Atlanta on March 3 and, along with “Kings as Collectors” and “Faces of History and Myth,” remain on view through September 2, 2007.

“Through this series of exhibitions at the High, the Louvre has an opportunity to tell the remarkable story of the creation of the museum and the development of its unparalleled collections,” stated David Brenneman, the High’s Director of Collections and Exhibitions and Managing Curator of the Louvre exhibitions. “For American audiences, this collaboration also means the chance to see great works, like those by Raphael, Velázquez and Rembrandt, all in the same gallery—a juxtaposition of paintings not possible at the Louvre, where works are traditionally arranged according to their different schools.”

Louvre Atlanta - An unprecedented partnership between the High Museum of Art and the Musée du Louvre, “Louvre Atlanta” is bringing hundreds of works of art from Paris to Atlanta through a series of long-term thematic exhibitions exploring the range, depth and historic development of the Louvre’s collections. The collaboration also includes the exchange of cultural expertise and operational strategies as well as educational programs and the development of joint publications, conferences, films and seminars exploring exhibitions and related themes. This exclusive partnership continues the High’s longstanding strategy of collaborating with international institutions to bring great art to Atlanta.

Year Two and Year Three Exhibitions - In October 2007 the High will launch its second year of exhibitions and programming in partnership with the Louvre, which will be devoted to the Louvre’s collection growth and development during the Napoleonic reign and the Enlightenment, a time of an increased interest in ancient art and archaeology. The central exhibition, “The Louvre and the Ancient World,” on view October 13, 2007, through September 2008, will feature masterpieces from the founding cultures of Western civilization and will include works from the Louvre’s Egyptian, Near Eastern, and Greco-Roman Antiquities departments.

The second year also includes the focus exhibition “Eye of Josephine,” on view October 13, 2007, through March 2008, which will reassemble for the first time an important and influential collection of Greco-Roman and Egyptian antiquities installed by the Empress Josephine at Malmaison, her residence located on the outskirts of Paris. A second focus exhibition, “Houdon in France and America,” on view April through September 2008, will present the work of Jean-Antoine Houdon, whose portraiture included prominent intellectual and political figures of the time, such as Diderot and Voltaire, as well as our founding fathers George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.

Year Three, October 2008–September 2009, will explore the Louvre of today and tomorrow. Exhibitions under development for this year will highlight the development of the present-day Louvre and its new relations with society and the world.