Poetry at the Louvre

The Louvre stands apart among the world’s great museums. Its vast, former royal palace gathers masterpieces and overlooked marvels alike, inviting visitors into a place where art, history, and the very ways we learn to see mingle in its halls. Few public institutions feel at once so charged with memory and so intensely alive.

At the Louvre is the result of a rare partnership between New York Review Books and the museum. The volume brings together one hundred newly commissioned poems by writers from around the world, each responding to an artwork or to the museum itself. Their voices guide readers through the galleries in an unexpected way, offering a fresh, sensorial journey through this extraordinary space.

At this event, one of the editors of the At the Louvre, Edwin Frank, will discuss poetry and the Louvre with Phillip John Usher, the co-editor of Building the Louvre: Architectures of Politics and Art.

Phillip John Usher is Professor of French Literature, Thought and Culture at NYU. He is the author of various books about French literature and arts, including Epic Arts in Renaissance France (Oxford UP, 2014). 

Edwin Frank was born in Boulder, Colorado. He is the author of Snake Train: Poems 1984–2013 and the editorial director of the NYRB Classics series.

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