Cy Twombly Anselm Kiefer Luciano Fabro Francois Morellet Georges Braque SFMOMA Considers Unusual Expansion Plan Picasso Leads Sotheby's Print Sale Less Is More at This Year’s Frieze

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The installation, in a stairwell linking the museum’s Egyptian and Mesopotamian antiquities, includes Athanor, a 30-by-15-foot painting of a naked man pondering the night sky that Kiefer calls a self-portrait, and two sculptures placed in facing niches at the top of the stairs. One is an earthlike mound with aluminum sunflowers. The other is a pile of lead books sprouting a blackened sunflower without petals.

Kiefer is the first in a series of contemporary artists who will make permanent contributions to the museum over the next three years. American Cy Twombly will paint a ceiling in the museum’s Salle des Bronzes, and France’s Francois Morellet will adorn the windows of another stairwell. A replacement has not yet been announced for a proposed fourth participant, Luciano Fabro of Italy, who died last summer.

The project was conceived by the museum's chief curator of contemporary art, Marie-Laure Bernadac, who director Henri Loyette hired in 2003 to bring more contemporary art to the Louvre, long known for its resistance to including living artists.