Louvre Curator Yannick Lintz: An Islamic Art Tour de France

In 2003, President Jacques Chirac expressed his political determination to bring a new civilization to the Louvre, as both a symbol of cultural dialogue and a means to combat the social divide in France. When it was created in 2012, the Arts of Islam thus became the museum's eighth department. A specialist in the Eastern world who joined the Louvre in 2004, Yannick Lintz took over from Sophie Makariou in 2013, aware of what her position represented in an international context, with the rise of radical Islamism and Islamophobia. She explains "that obviously we are here to study and enrich the collections, but also to revitalize and promote this heritage throughout the country, convinced of the importance of Islam in the coming years. I like the sense of social utility. With the project "Arts of Islam: a past for a present", I feel the civic responsibility aspect deeply."   How did this highly ambitious program come about? I organized a symposium at the École du Louvre in 2016, in order to create the Réseau d'Art Islamique en France (Islamic Art Network in France). This enabled us to map collections in all of France's museums, and we used the study to draw up a list of partner cities for the project.…