lThe Olympic Games (OG) were exciting, even historic, the stadiums were packed and setbacks were rare. The good vibes continue with the Paralympic Games until September 8. After calling out the grumpy ones “just to enjoy” –they didn’t forgive her, it’s true– Anne Hidalgo now intends to stretch her good streak to the maximum.
As the (socialist) mayor of Paris, she will no doubt have a hard time making her city look forever like the clean setting of the series. Emily in ParisShe had an idea: the Olympic rings hanging from the Eiffel Tower would stay there. Even if the metal monument is up to the municipality, it is not certain that Anne Hidalgo has the right to decide alone without taking into account the heritage code, therefore the State, or even the heirs, especially since the rings are a brand and their display a form of publicity. Criticism was not long in coming, on the Internet, in the form of a petition, from the resigning minister, Rachida Dati, or from the heirs of Gustave Eiffel.
This example says a lot about the way culture is exploited during these Games. The athletes in the arena, the public in the stands, the whole world in front of their televisions were amazed by the way the monuments and museums served as a backdrop and magnified the competitions. But inside the sites that exhibited art, like the Louvre, it was no party.
Seduce an audience whose mind is elsewhere
Most Parisian museums experienced a drop in attendance of around 25% to 50% during the Olympics. The Palace of Versailles was packed outdoors for the equestrian and modern pentathlon events, but saw visitor numbers drop by 25% in the halls. The reason is very banal. Culture lovers, French and foreign, have fled Paris; it would have been masochistic to move there at a time when everything is more expensive and complicated. On the contrary, sports enthusiasts and the collective masses, who came to Paris from all over the world, did not really care about culture, or even did not care about it. It has been like this for decades. In London in 2012 and in Rio in 2016, it was catastrophic for cultural venues.
The most prestigious museums and monuments, “Instagrammed” like never before, hope to recover in the coming months. Let us recall, however, that in the spring, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the City of Paris and the Ministry of Culture praised, not without lyricism, a union beneficial to all between sport and the arts. Nobody believed it, but one had to pretend to believe it. It was even funny or pathetic: in public, museum owners used hackneyed clichés about the links between art and sport; in private, they had harsh words about the sequence.
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