January 27, 2003	Monday	Ziqa’ad 23,1423

PARIS, Jan 26: French Culture Minister Jean-Jacques Aillagon said that the Louvre — considered the largest museum in the world — will not be giving itself a department of Islamic arts, in spite of a proposal made last October by President Chirac at the Francophone summit in Beirut.

Aillagon noted that although he is for the idea, it would be impossible to find the space necessary to bring about creation of the new department. The only possibility that had been envisaged by him and Henri Loyrette, president of the Louvre, would have been to ask for the departure from an existing wing of the Louvre of the Museum of Decorative Arts.

At Beirut last October, Chirac had proposed the creation at the Louvre of an eighth department devoted to Islamic art, and this, he said at the time, as a “living example of cultural dialogue.”