CULTURE CLUB: LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton is hoping to attract visitors in town for the Paris Olympics to its landmark stores and cultural venues with a series of summer exhibitions themed around sports.
A premium partner of the Olympic Games, due to run from July 26 to Aug. 11, and the Paralympic Games, from Aug. 28 to Sept. 8, the luxury conglomerate on Monday detailed its contribution to the Cultural Olympiad, a program of free side events bridging sports and culture.
Several of them will be clustered around the Samaritaine Paris department store and Louis Vuitton’s neighboring LV Dream exhibition space, while others will take place at the Dior, Berluti and Guerlain stores or at the Fondation Louis Vuitton museum.
The French luxury group hopes to capitalize on strong interest in sports in the run-up to the Summer Games, as evidenced by a recent exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, titled “Fashion and Sport, From One Podium to the Other,” that drew almost 294,000 visitors between Sept. 20 and April 7, according to organizers.
For anyone worried about the logistics of visiting stores and museums during what has been billed as the biggest event organized in France, most of the exhibitions will remain on show for several months.
In conjunction with the Olympic flame passing through the Fondation Vuitton, the institution will showcase works from its collection alongside “Olympic Rings,” a loaned painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, from May 7 to Sept. 9.
Samaritaine is set to host three free exhibitions between April 30 and Sept. 8 under the banner “Paris joins the game.”
“Global sporting legends” will present 100 iconic objects that belonged to sporting legends of the past century, while “Domestic Games, women take the lead” will present installations by Camille Menard, founder of Agnst Design, that highlight the role of sports in our daily lives and women’s role in international sporting competitions.
The department store, which created a sporting club for its employees in 1895, has also invited Fisheye magazine to curate a display of photos of fencer Enzo Lefort, a Louis Vuitton and LVMH ambassador.
Archive documents, photos and objects highlighting Vuitton’s close ties with sports will be the focus of a room within the LV Dream exhibition highlighting the luxury brand’s past and contemporary artistic collaborations, set to run from June 18 to Dec. 31.
Meanwhile, a trunk to carry a pickleball game, imagined by the late Virgil Abloh, former head of menswear at Vuitton, will feature in “La Malle Courrier,” a show at the Vuitton family home in the suburb of Asnières which opened on April 2 and is due to run until Dec. 31.
Dior will exhibit a series of photos featuring its sports ambassadors at the Galerie Dior exhibition space at its flagship on Avenue Montaigne, while Berluti, which is dressing Team France for the opening ceremonies of the Games, is teaming with artist Mathieu Forget for an exhibition combining movement, sports and fashion.
Guerlain, meanwhile, will be going for gold with “Extraordinary Gold,” a show featuring works by 16 artists at its flagship on the Avenue des Champs-Elysées.