Bernard Arnault: “I do not believe in artistic nationalism” – The World

The World | 07/10/2014 at 20:35 • Updated 08.10.2014 at 8:15 | Interview by Philippe Dagen

October 24, open to the public the Louis Vuitton Foundation, created at the initiative of Bernard Arnault. In 2002, it had awarded the project to the architect Frank Gehry after a visit to the Guggenheim Bilbao, which Gehry is the author. Spectacular low to

qualify the building that now stands in the Bois de Boulogne. It took engineers and technical innovations for drawing a reality after twelve years of research and work. The foundation will focus on the arts today. Meeting with its founder, captain of industry, collector and patron, all at a scale which France has not used.

What was your first contact with art

They started very early, thanks to my mother. While I was still very young, she took me to the nearby museums – we lived in the North. So Lille, Brussels, at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. My mother was very attentive to this education and I have been introduced to the world of art beginning with the Flemish and Northern painters. What is added that one of my grandmothers died two years before I was born, Clouet was a descendant of the painter François Clouet.

What was your first purchase of collector

It was 1982, in New York. One day I went to visit the exhibition which preceded a sale at Sotheby’s. I saw a Monet, a view of London from 1902, Charing Cross Bridge . She dazzled me, but I thought I could never buy it. I …