How did the Musée du Louvre became one of the most famous and culturally significant art galleries in the world? 

Discovering the Musée du Louvre is a video learning course based on the BBC documentary by Professor Tim Benton (Professor Emeritus of Art History, Open University), made following the construction of The Grand Louvre and it’s world famous pyramids.

This video course will teach you how the Louvre, its buildings and its collections have changed over its long history – and how the public have reacted to it.

Filmed in 1998, these videos include interviews with The Grand Louvre’s architect I.M. PEI and the museum’s renowned curators.

Each lesson walks you through a video clip, prompting you to reflect on different aspects of the institution’s history, collections and curation.

After studying this course, you should be able to :

• Understand how The Grand Louvre has come to be as it is
• Critically discuss the claim that the collections in the Louvre constitute a significant part of the canon of Western European art
• Ask questions of museums and collections that are appropriate to art history