Photo: Shutterstock/George Wirt

The world’s biggest cosmetics company, L’Oréal, and the world’s largest museum, the Louvre, signed a three-year partnership to highlight beauty in art during the past 10,000 years. The exhibition, “De Toutes Beautés,” opens tomorrow.

Under terms of the deal, L’Oréal Group and the Louvre created a tour of the museum tracing the evolution of beauty through 108 works, including “Sleeping Hermaphroditus,” “Spoon in the Shape of a Swimmer Holding a Duck” and “King Sargon II and a High Dignitary.” The exhibition highlights three themes: rituals, objects and beauty practice; canons or idealized visions of beauty; and what questions of appearance and beauty reveal about societies and their transformations, according to curators.

Using a bespoke app, visitors scan QR codes to hear more about 44 of the masterpieces. Co-produced by L’Oréal and the Louvre, the audio tour explains the artwork through the prism of beauty. The beauty company and museum also co-produced a six-episode web series to appear early next year.

“At the heart of our purpose, ‘to create the beauty that moves the world’, lies the desire to make beauty accessible to all, and tell the story of beauty’s diverse and enduring role since the dawn of time.  This is what has driven us to explore new partnership opportunities and approaches.  The Louvre was the obvious choice for this partnership, given the richness and diversity of its collections and its ability to shed light on even the most contemporary of questions,” said Nicolas Hieronimus, CEO of L’Oréal Groupe.

“This unique journey, born from a fruitful dialogue with the L’Oréal teams, invites visitors to experience the Louvre’s collections in a new light,” noted Laurence des Cars, president and director of the Louvre Museum. “Together, we designed a journey that highlights the vast diversity of beauty across eras and cultures. Through this playful and accessible approach to the artworks, the Louvre affirms its role as a school of seeing, multiplying the paths of discovery to share its heritage ever more widely and generously.”