ABSTRACT
This article examines the recent renovations of the Louvre Museum, paying particular attention to the Carrousel du Louvre, a shopping mall which opened in the Richelieu wing in 1993. It argues that the consumer area occupies a precarious position, neither clearly inside nor outside of the museum complex. This marginal location potentially undermines traditional distinctions between 'high' and 'popular' culture, upon which the definition of the museum as a haven for 'high' art is founded. However, through close readings of various representations of the mall, including advertisements for it, the author demonstrates that differences between 'elite' and 'popular' culture, as well as those between desirable and undesir able museum patrons, are not erased. Distinctions of gender, class and nationality are continually unmade and remade in relation to the Carrousel du Louvre. The controversial shopping mall can be understood in terms of the contradictory goals of museum administrators and designers. Even as they strive to present a modern and democratic museum, one that is open to a diverse public, they simultaneously attempt to maintain the status of the Louvre as an elite protector of the French cultural heritage.
