Louvre to send artworks to Japan’s Fukushima

PARIS (AFP) ― France’s Louvre museum plans to send more than 20 artworks to Japan, including Fukushima prefecture, near the stricken nuclear plant, in order to show solidarity with the disaster-hit country.

The exhibition will run from April 20 to Sept. 17 in Japan’s Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, said Jean-Luc Martinez, director of the department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities at the Louvre.

The artworks ― 23 paintings, sculptures, drawings and other works from different eras and civilizations ― will arrive July 28 at the Fukushima prefecture arts museum.

“Neither the works nor staff from the Louvre who will accompany them on a voluntary basis will be endangered,” said Martinez, adding that the level of radioactivity was no higher than in a Paris museum.

The show was organised as a gesture of solidarity with the Japanese, after last year’s massive March 11 earthquake and tsunami hit the northeast of Japan, sparking the Fukushima nuclear disaster.