Louvre exhibition zooms in on history and those behind the modern Olympics
Three months before the start of the Paris Olympics, the Louvre will add its cultural heft to the prelude with the launch on Wednesday of an exhibition glorifying the museum's role in the birth of the modern Games. It features the academics, artists and politicians whose dynamism defined the Olympics at its rebirth in 1896.
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"Olympism, a Modern Creation, an Ancient Heritage" runs until 16 September in the Galerie Richelieu and gathers 120 vases, pictures, drawings, stamps and letters from the Louvre, private collections as well as the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, the British Museum and the Ecole Française in Athens.
It also parades the contributions of the artist Emile Gilliéron, who studied in Paris and roamed the Louvre galleries, and the academic Edmond Pottier, a conservationist and teacher at the museum.
It was Gilliéron – installed in Athens since 1876 as an art teacher in the court of King George I – who delved into images of ancient Greece to inspire commemorative stamps for the 1896 Games in Athens.
The roles of the Greek writer Dimitrios Vikelas, the first president of the International Olympic Committee, and the academic turned politician Spyridon Lambros, are also highlighted.
There is also a nod to the philologist Michel Bréal, whose way with words managed to charm organisers of the 1896 Games into including the marathon race.
Bréal's specially commissioned silver cup that was awarded to marathon winner Spyridon Louis is on show for the first time in Paris courtesy of a loan from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation in Athens.
"The exhibition adds depth to our knowledge of the Games," said Louvre chief Laurence des Cars.
"It reminds us of the origins of the modern Olympic Games and what they owe to the collections from our museum.
"Just as it is in the arts, its the same thing in sports: there's inspiration in the galleries of the museum and that comes back to us with benefits."
Gender injustice
Fittingly, latter-day marathon runners will pass through the Louvre's grounds during the men's race on 10 August and the women's race on the final day of the Olympics on 11 August.
The exhibition also embraces the injustices of the early Olympics. No women competed in the inaugural Games in 1896, and only 22 women were involved in the 1900 Paris Games in tennis, golf, croquet, sailing and equestrianism.
They were allowed into the archery events in 1904 as well as swimming and diving in 1912.
By the London 2012 Olympics, 44 percent of the athletes were women. Those Games were anointed the "Women’s Games" to salute the first time that every participating country had female athletes in their teams.
Twelve years on, Paris will be the first Games to have equal representation of men and women.
"It's been a long road," said exhibition co-curator Alexandre Farnoux, a professor of archaeology and Greek art history at the Sorbonne.
"And it's worth pointing out that apart from the Olympics – and this is also the paradox – women were allowed to take part in international competitions even before the First World War.
"Immediately afterwards, they had international competitions, including rugby, and we are showing through a whole series of archive photos that women's sport became established very quickly but the Olympics remained completely closed for a very long time."
Sporting theme
The Louvre exhibition is the latest addition to a series of cultural events with a sporting theme around the French capital.
Last September, the Pompidou Centre started guided tours on Saturday afternoons of pieces from its modern and contemporary art collection which feature sports.
Since February the Musée de l'Orangerie and Musée D'Orsay have also weighed in, with dancers and musicians performing just metres from some of the world's most celebrated paintings and sculptures.
"When we were appointed, the whole team decided to do something specific for the Olympic Games and dedicated to urban culture and sport," said Musée d'Orsay boss Pierre-Emmanuel Lecerf.
"We wanted to show the relationship between sport and our space – which can be the architecture or the collection."
In ancient times that connection was a matter of life and death.
"Physical training meant getting the citizen ready to be an infantryman in the army at some point," added Farnoux,
"Cities were defended by the citizens themselves and a citizen had to be able to carry weapons weighing between 15 and 20 kilograms and possibly have to run for a few kilometres with that load on their back.
"You just can't do that if you don't do sports. And so the gymnasiums that were created in the cities were to help people stay in shape for the day they might be mobilised."
Farnoux added wryly: "Our sporting society is very much linked to spectacle."
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