November 8th - Louvre Opened as a Museum
On this day, in 1793, the Louvre in Paris was opened to the public as a museum by the French Revolutionary government. The public were given free access on three days a week and this was generally appreciated unlike art.
In the early days, artists lived within the Louvre itself. Rent was very cheap in those days because it was 300 artists/mistresses to a room. The artists spent their days mixing paints, cleaning paints, talking about paints, and fornicating. They also spent a lot of time patting themselves on the back for talking so much about the Revolution.
The Louvre's first "acquisition" was the Royal collection of King Louis XVI who was more than happy to support the local arts community. Besides he didn't have room for all his artwork in prison anyway.
Many of the works came from confiscated royal collections and the Church, but the greedy revolutionaries were not happy with their meager collection of royal baubles. They set out on bloodthirsty antiquing expeditions. The French revolutionary armies returned from across Europe with the bounty of their bloody work and keen artistic eye.
Before the revolution the Louvre started as a fortress of war. After the revolution it became a fortress of freedom of expression with oppression-seeking missiles. Also, it had the most powerful weapon of all, imagination. When the revolutionaries marched into the Louvre they chanted "You can take our land and food and freedom, but you'll never take our freedom." They were artists so it made sense to them.
When the revolution occurred the Louvre was declared "a place for bringing together monuments of all the sciences and arts." It was a celebration of human potential and that's why they had to wage war across Europe and take all the good stuff.
People worried about vandalism of important artworks so the preparation of the Louvre was made a top priority. It was second only to executing toffs and each citizen's obligatory Frenchness training that involved being able to identify 196 different kinds of bread roll.
Today the Louvre has over 380 000 objects. Of these four are worth seeing. The rest of the pieces have deep artistic importance that very few people understand. The collection also includes no less than ten thousand artistic representations of bread rolls. This includes a delightful eight-foot wide granite croissant.
The Louvre has also been franchised. It now has branches in Lens in France and in Abu Dhabi. It is not known if these new Louvres are filled with unemployed art students and whores.