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French billionaire may throw in towel on Paris museum

One of France's richest men is on the brink of ditching plans to build a spectacular contemporary art museum outside Paris because he is fed up with the red tape and inertia of the local authorities.

The billionaire businessman, Francois Pinault, owner of one of the finest private contemporary art collections in Europe, is now likely to put it on display in a magnificent 18th-century palace in Venice.

"It's unbelievable," one of Pinault's aides, who asked not to be named, said Monday. "You offer these guys an exceptional art collection, you put up ?150 million (US$285 million) for a museum to rival the Guggenheim in Bilbao or the Saatchi in London, and no one does a thing about it."

Pinault, whose ?3 billion-plus personal fortune is the third biggest in France, announced in 2000 that he was going to build the museum on the site of a disused Renault car factory on the Ile Seguin in the Seine three miles from Paris. The Francois Pinault Foundation for Contemporary Art would be open within five years, he promised.

But having spent some 20 million euros (US$26 million) on feasibility studies and architect's fees, Pinault has reportedly lost patience with the local councilors of Boulogne-Billancourt, who have have made little or no progress towards deciding what should be done with the 50 hectares of the island not occupied by the planned museum.

"We didn't expect a red carpet, but we did expect some kind of action," one of the project leaders told Liberation newspaper.
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