The Welcoming Hands, Louise Bourgeois

The Welcoming Hands, Louise Bourgeois

The Welcoming Hands, Tuileries yard, facing Jeu de paume museum

The terrace of the Tuileries, overlooking the Place de la Concorde, is under renovation. Louise Bourgeois’ The Welcoming Hands are surrounded by wire fencing. The artist created them for Ellis Island in New York Harbor, where millions of immigrants passed through. These five bronze sculptures set on granite blocks have been installed in front of the Jeu de Paume since 2000. And the Tuileries Garden—as I have just learned—was allocated to the Louvre in 2006, along with the works installed on the lawns and in the alleys. These Welcoming Hands bring to mind Louise Bourgeois, whom I knew in New York during the 1990s. She was a grand figure, whose work was recognized late—undoubtedly because she was a woman. The Museum of Modern Art in New York devoted a major exhibition to her in 1982 (when she was more than seventy years old) followed by the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Tate Modern in London in 2008. She had lent me a sculpture for a small exhibition at Columbia University on French exiles in the United States during World War II. The irony of these hands inaccessible behind their curtain of wire makes them all the more desirable and symbolic. Soon they will be freed, and I will come back to shake hands with them.