A Parisian fire marshal can take some of the credit for launching the three-year Louvre Atlanta project, which has raised the profile of the High Museum of Art and led to other fruitful collaborations with prestigious institutions.

The origin of the Louvre Atlanta project is most often traced to a close working relationship between Henri Loyrette, the president and director of the Louvre Museum, and Michael Shapiro, the High’s director.

But a fire marshal in charge of inspecting the Louvre may also have had a hand in bringing one of the world’s greatest museums together with a regional institution of fiery ambition.

After all, it was the fire marshal who ordered that the rooms in the Louvre dedicated to the 18th-century decorative arts be closed due to the risk of electrical fires.

“We had the small beginnings of a fire in these areas and the fire marshal said we were obliged to close them until we renewed the electric installations,” Isabelle Lemaistre, the Louvre’s main curator for sculpture, told GlobalAtlanta during an interview in her office off one of the labyrinthine halls in the basement of the Louvre.

Dr. Lemaistre also has been the main Louvre official overseeing the project and coordinating the multiple visits of museum staff on both sides of the Atlantic.

The fire marshal’s command led to the decision that the decorative arts section of the museum needed to be redone entirely.

In view that there was no budget for these renovations, Dr. Lemaistre acknowledged that the $18 million raised by the High for the project enabled the Louvre to plan for the necessary improvements.

Although the renovation work has hardly begun, she said that an architect to redesign the rooms has been chosen and the planning is underway.

Which institution has benefited the most from the relationship remains an open question, although their advocates are quick to site advantages for each of the institutions.

The Louvre Atlanta project has drawn more than 1 million visitors to the High from the Southeast U.S. and beyond and increased its reputation by managing the project’s exhibitions effectively.

The recent announcement that the High has entered into another three-year program, this time with New York’s Museum of Modern Art, is the latest coup for Dr. Shapiro.

Louvre Atlanta, which ends this fall, has proved that the High can successfully care for and promote to a regional audience important collaborative relationships of this sort.

But aside from helping to meet the demands of the fire marshal how has the Louvre benefited?

As part of her responsibility for the project, Dr. Lemaistre had to quell the criticisms of the project from inside the Louvre as well as outside.

Inside, curators from different departments were involved, leading to disagreements about which works should be included and concerns about the works’ safety during the process of shipping them to and from Atlanta.

“There are always problems but they have been resolved, even some of them which were very difficult to resolve,” Dr. Lemaistre said. “When you are a curator, you have to curate the objects, making sure they are in good condition, not damaged and we have to show them off, show the big masterpieces to the most people.”

Outside, certain critics objected to the Louvre sending its prized possessions to other countries as if it were bartering off its cultural heritage for commercial profit. She dismissed these criticisms as coming from “a small circle of amateurs.”

The internal criticisms were blunted by the enthusiasm with which the project was received in Atlanta and the region.

“We saw students coming from places very far from Atlanta, some by plane to visit the (High) museum,” she said. “For us it’s very important.”

She also said that the French curators were struck by how their American counterparts viewed works differently and consequently arranged them in unexpected ways.

“Having worked for so many years with the staff in Atlanta, we learned a lot because everyone has a different way of working,” she said.

She also was intrigued by how Americans reduced their descriptions of the different masterpieces in ways that would be difficult for a French person.

Aside from the artistic insights, the Louvre Atlanta project helped prepare her museum for its Abu Dhabi project that reportedly is to bring to the Louvre $900 million for the use of its name and for loans of some 300 works.

Despite these successes, she said that the Louvre would be reluctant to enter into a similar contract with another American museum in the near future.

“There is so much preparation involved,” she said. “It really has turned out to be a five- to six-year project.”

That could change, of course, with the next visit of a fire marshal.

Go to www.high.org for more information about programs at the High.

2010 The Agio Press, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without expressed permission.