Atlanta is about to get a heavy dose of art this fall in a fit of activity that highlights a thriving cultural community that has resulted from museum collaborations. 

A three-year partnership between the High Museum of Art and the Musée du Louvre will enter its final year having energized the cultural life of Atlanta while underscoring the civic and educational benefits of this innovative partnership.

The final phase of Louvre Atlanta will open on Oct. 12 with an exhibition exploring the meaning of a “masterpiece” and definitions of taste and connoisseurship.

The Louvre exhibition will be joined by 44 medieval and renaissance masterpieces from London’s Victoria and Albert Museum including from Sept. 13 through Jan. 4, 2009, one of Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks.

And soon they will be joined by 14 terra cotta warriors and dozens of related artifacts from China’s Shaanxi province in “The First Emperor, China Terracotta Army” exhibition opening on Nov. 16.

Meanwhile, Emory University’s Carlos Museum of Art will be hosting the “Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs” a new exhibition featuring more than 130 treasures from the tomb of the celebrated pharaoh King Tut and additional ancient sites, at the Atlanta Civic Center downtown from Nov. 15-May 22, 2009.

The High and Carlos museums are working together to sell promotional ticket packages that will provide access to all the exhibits.

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When Michael Shapiro, the High’s director, and Henri Loyrette, the Louvre’s president and director, masterminded the Louvre Atlanta partnership, they decided to provide a historical overview of the Louvre.

They knew at the time they were taking a leap of faith that the Louvre’s past would prove interesting to an American audience, but the climbing numbers of Americans visiting the Louvre annually was reassuring.

Mr. Loyrette told GlobalAtlanta a year before the exhibition opened in October 2006 that because of the more than 1.2 million American visitors to the Louvre a year, he considered it in a lighthearted way to be one of the United States’ largest museums. 

But there was no guarantee the project would be a success, despite their awareness that museums in the U.S.’s interior wanted to add to their collections and programs.

The first of the three phases of Louvre Atlanta began with the exhibitions titled “Kings as Collectors,” featuring paintings and sculptures collected by French kings in the 17th and 18th centuries; “The King’s Drawings,” and “Faces of History and Myth: Busts from the Musée du Louvre.”

“I like to say that we are in the forever business,” Mr. Shapiro said, adding that he did not want the project to become “an end game,” but that it would lead to continued relations with the Louvre and other great museums throughout the world.

But it was anyone’s guess as to what its impact would be on Atlanta and the Southeast, not to mention what the fallout would be in the Louvre’s home country, where some claimed French culture was being put up for sale.

As has been often reported, Mr. Shapiro and Mr. Loyrette had worked together when they were assembling an impressionism show for the High from artworks at the Quai d’Orsay.

But the impetus for the Louvre Atlanta partnership emerged from enthusiasm over the completion of new wings at the High.  The additions were designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano, who augmented the original design of U.S. architect Richard Meier.

Mr. Loyrette’s promotion to head the Louvre also prompted Mr. Shapiro to approach him about working together.

In the wake of the announcement of the partnership, the media courted both men. Their message of collaboration, friendship and trust in each other resonated widely at a time when French and U.S. political relations were strained due to the war in Iraq.

Aside from their affinity for each other and the compatibility of their objectives, other ingredients led to the success of the collaboration.

Anne Cox Chambers, the philanthropist who lives part of each year in France and has been an instrumental supporter of the arts in Atlanta, spoke with GlobalAtlanta at the original press briefing held in 2005 in New York about her sentimental support for the project.

Ms. Chambers had many friends and acquaintances among the art patrons and artists who died in the crash of the chartered Air France plane at Orly Field in Paris in 1962. Their memory was a significant factor in her decision to help finance the Louvre Atlanta partnership, which cost the High $18 million.

A bronze casting of Auguste Rodin’s sculpture “Shade” that stands before the High is a gift from the French government commemorating the tragic crash.

More recently, the relationships that grew out of the 1996 Olympic Games and its accompanying Cultural Olympiad, which organized the cultural events taking place at the time of the games, also were motivators.

While Mr. Shapiro called the Louvre Atlanta partnership “a quantum leap” for his museum, he added that it grew naturally out of the Cultural Olympiad’s exhibition, titled “Rings: Five Passions in World Art.”

“That exhibition was a turning point for us,” David Brenneman, the High’s curator for European art, recalled. “Just through the catalogue and the collaborations got us thinking about all those museums out there.”

James Henderson, an Atlanta attorney and chairman of the High’s board of directors, said that he felt the Louvre Atlanta partnership attracted other high-quality exhibitions by providing their curators with the confidence that the High could handle them.

From the perspective of Charles Green, the CEO of Sunrise Bank of Atlanta and chairman of the Fulton County Arts Council, the success of the Louvre Atlanta partnership has coincided with the emergence of Atlanta as an international city.

“People were breathless,” Mr. Green said of the announcement that the Louvre would partner with the High, some in disbelief at such an unlikely match.

While the High’s collection had certain strengths, primarily in folk art, it lagged behind museums in many comparably sized cities. The loss of so many patrons in 1962 was partially to blame for its slow growth, he added.

Skeptics were wary of the High’s ability to manage such a challenge, he said, and yet they were awed that it would even have a chance.

Since then the city has grown in stature internationally, having attracted businesses from around the world and seen the growth of ethnic communities with new residents bringing diverse cultural backgrounds with them.

The Louvre Atlanta partnership was reassuring, he also said, in that it underscored a commitment to a global perspective, support for the arts and an awareness that Atlanta had become more cosmopolitan.

The spirit of collaboration that the High has come to embody recently shone forth when Dimitrios Pandermalis, the president of the New Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece, spoke in Atlanta. 

During his lecture at the High, he reviewed the painstaking efforts that have gone into transferring artifacts from the top of the hill to the new museum at its base in downtown Athens.

The first question he was asked from the audience was whether he felt that the British Museum would ever return the Elgin marbles that were taken from the Parthenon some 200 years ago.

The marbles originally belong to the Parthenon and other buildings on the Acropolis hill.  Between 1801-1812 they were removed to London, but many companion pieces remain in Greece and the Greek government is trying to reassemble them in the new museum.

Instead of demanding their return as some Greek officials have done, Dr. Pandermalis spoke adamantly about his “optimism” that a future collaboration between the museums would allow their return for a period of time.

Bonnie Speed, director of Emory University’s Michael C. Carlos Museum, said that her museum has collaborated with museums around the world for years, but added that the current activity throughout the city was exceptional.

“Atlanta is an amazing cultural city,” she said while acknowledging that its cultural activities until now have been overshadowed by its professional sports teams. “The arts are coming to the fore. The cultural institutions are finally getting their due.”