“Keeping the five rings on the Eiffel Tower says a lot about how culture was instrumentalized during the Olympics”

LThe Olympic Games (OG) were exciting, historic even, the stadiums were full, the hiccups rare. The good vibes continue with the Paralympic Games until September 8. After calling the grumpy ones “hard-to-enjoy” – they had not spared her, it is true –, Anne Hidalgo now intends to extend her good streak as long as possible.

As the (socialist) mayor of Paris will doubtless have difficulty in making her city eternally resemble the clean decor of the series Emily in Parisshe had an idea: the Olympic rings hanging on the Eiffel Tower will stay there. Even if the metal monument depends on 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 advertising. The critics did not wait long, on the Web, 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 instrumentalized during these Games. Athletes in the arena, the public in the stands, the whole world in front of their televisions were amazed by the way in which monuments and museums served as a backdrop and magnified the competitions. But inside the sites exhibiting art, like the Louvre, it was not a party.

Seduce an audience whose minds are elsewhere

Most Parisian museums saw a drop in attendance of around 25% to 50% during the Olympics. The Château de Versailles was packed outside for the equestrian and modern pentathlon events, but saw the number of visitors drop by 25% in the rooms. The reason is quite banal. Culture lovers, both French and foreign, fled Paris – it would have been masochistic to travel at a time when everything is more expensive and complicated. Conversely, sports and mass enthusiasts, who came to Paris from all over the world, did not really have their minds on 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 rebuild themselves in the coming months. Let’s remember that in the spring, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the City of Paris and the Ministry of Culture praised, not without lyricism, a win-win marriage of sport and the arts. No one believed it, but they had to pretend to believe it. It was even amusing or pathetic: in public, museum bosses used hackneyed clichés about the links between art and sport; in private, they had harsh words for the sequence.

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