Louvre exhibition zooms in on history and those behind the modern Olympics

Three months before the start of the Paris Olympics, the Louvre will add its cultural heft to the prelude with the launch on Wednesday of an exhibition glorifying the museum's role in the birth of the modern Games. It features the academics, artists and politicians whose dynamism defined the Olympics at its rebirth in 1896.

"Olympism, a Modern Creation, an Ancient Heritage" runs until 16 September in the Galerie Richelieu and gathers 120 vases, pictures, drawings, stamps and letters from the Louvre, private collections as well as the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, the British Museum and the Ecole Française in Athens.

It also parades the contributions of the artist Emile Gilliéron, who studied in Paris and roamed the Louvre galleries, and the academic Edmond Pottier, a conservationist and teacher at the museum.

It was Gilliéron – installed in Athens since 1876 as an art teacher in the court of King George I – who delved into images of ancient Greece to inspire commemorative stamps for the 1896 Games in Athens.

The roles of the Greek writer Dimitrios Vikelas, the first president of the International Olympic Committee, and the academic turned politician Spyridon Lambros, are also highlighted.

There is also a nod to the philologist Michel Bréal, whose way with words managed to charm organisers of the 1896 Games into including the marathon race.

Bréal's specially commissioned silver cup that was awarded to marathon winner Spyridon Louis is on show for the first time in Paris courtesy of a loan from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation in Athens.

They were allowed into the archery events in 1904 as well as swimming and diving in 1912.

Read more on RFI English

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