Mona Lisa Meets McDo
Bas-reliefs and big macs. That’s the plan for the world’s most famous museum — the Louvre. It was announced this week that a McDonald’s will be added to the Carrousel de Louvre, the museum’s underground food court:
French culture and American convenience will come together in December — thanks to plans by the McDonald’s restaurant chain to hang its shingle in the shadow of the Louvre.
[...]
In France and elsewhere, McDonald’s is emblematic of U.S.-driven globalization and the homogenization of cultures. However, the fast food chain’s chief executive, Jim Skinner, said in an interview published Monday that the reason McDonald’s is such a hit in France, where it has over 1,000 outlets, is that “we are perceived as a French enterprise.”
The McDonald’s on the famed Champs-Elysees Avenue is the most profitable in the world, he said. The interview was published in the economic daily Les Echos.
Somehow, it just doesn’t seem right, mixing happy meals and high art. All I can say is, greasy fingers + centuries-old artworks = trouble.
