Winged victory

YOU can just see its glass wingtips flashing above the treetops of the Bois de Boulogne. Close up, the new museum designed by Frank Gehry looks like a futuristic ship with sheer slanting sails. As befits its patron, Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of LVMH, the world’s largest luxury-goods conglomerate, the Fondation Louis Vuitton is meant to make a statement.

The museum opens on October 27th. It has taken six years and, sources close to the project say, cost a third more than its €100m ($125m) budget. The museum was funded by LVMH and bears the name (and logo) of its flagship brand, Louis Vuitton. But the building is a personal triumph for Mr Arnault, who had wanted Mr Gehry on board as soon as he saw his Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, in 2001.

The Frenchman is one of several rich patrons opening private museums around the world. Earlier this year two huge new showcases for contemporary art opened in Shanghai: the Long Museum, commissioned by two collectors, Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei, and the Yuz Museum, built by an Indonesian Chinese businessman, Budi Tek. Next year, Eli Broad is set to open his museum in Los Angeles.

American cultural institutions are often privately built, but France has long viewed culture as the preserve of the state and incompatible with commerce. Corporate art patronage is understated, even at the 30-year-old Fondation Cartier which is funded by the jeweller. Yet with state spending on the arts being squeezed, even in France, companies and private individuals are stepping in with bold spaces that enjoy the backing of its political leaders. The Fondation Vuitton is a milestone. When a group of private residents and environmentalists managed to have its building permit annulled by a court in 2011, the French parliament passed legislation declaring the project to be in the public interest, over-riding that and any related rulings.

The lawmakers knew that, under the agreement for the one-hectare plot signed between the Fondation Vuitton and the city of Paris, the building would become city property after 55 years. The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, one of Fondation Vuitton’s early champions, says it is “a gift for Paris” with “nothing but benefits”.

How much can change in a decade. As recently as 2005 another art-loving French billionaire, François Pinault, founder of a rival luxury group now called Kering, gave up his dream to build a private museum in Paris. Five years before he had announced plans for a €150m art foundation on the site of the old Renault factory on Ile Seguin in the suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt, and he commissioned a Japanese architect, Tadao Ando, to design it. In the end, frustrated by bureaucratic delays and the lack of surrounding infrastructure, he decamped to Venice. Jean-Pierre Fourcade, the then mayor of Boulogne-Billancourt, admits to delays, but says Mr Pinault’s family and advisers also found the project too costly.

Mr Pinault, who owns Christie’s and has a considerable collection of contemporary art, took over Palazzo Grassi, the exhibition venue formerly run by Fiat in Venice, and turned the city’s old customs building, Punta della Dogana, into a private showcase. So far he has spent €60m there, according to an adviser, Jean-Jacques Aillagon, a former French culture minister.

Over at the Fondation Vuitton, Mr Gehry has been careful to create uneccentric, museum-style interiors: 11 galleries, a bookshop, a restaurant, a 350-seat auditorium and a large foyer. The inaugural exhibition will focus on maquettes, sketches and videos of his architecture, coinciding with a Gehry show at the Pompidou Centre. The launch will also feature new commissions by such artists as Olafur Eliasson and Ellsworth Kelly. Later, the Fondation will hold a solo Eliasson show and an historic exhibition including works loaned by other museums in a programme curated by its artistic director, Suzanne Pagé, formerly head of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Highlights of the LVMH collection, which includes works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Gilbert & George and Jeff Koons, will also regularly be displayed, along with occasional loans from Mr Arnault’s personal art trove.

Mr Pinault, meanwhile, is quietly rebuilding his profile in France. In late 2013 he inaugurated a show of his collection at the Conciergerie in Paris, and he has since announced that he is opening an artists’ residence next to the new Louvre offshoot in Lens, in northern France. His adviser, Mr Aillagon, says a permanent Pinault space in France is not off the cards, and that he and Mr Pinault have visited a number of sites and buildings. The private museum in France may be set for a shinier future.