A little Paris in south Minneapolis

No, "Mona Lisa" won't come to Minnesota next year to star in "The Louvre and the Masterpiece" at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. But many of her very good friends from the Paris museum will, including drawings by Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, a 3,000-year-old Egyptian portrait head, and paintings by Vermeer, Boucher, Chardin, Géricault, Ingres and Georges de La Tour.

The show is a "significant investment" by the Minneapolis museum, said director Kaywin Feldman, who began negotiating for it shortly after assuming her post in January. It was organized by the Louvre and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, where it debuts next month. It will be shown only in Atlanta and Minneapolis, where it will run Oct. 18, 2009, through Jan. 10, 2010.

Tickets will be the most expensive in the museum's history, costing $16 on weekends and $14 during the week. The museum expects to "breeze past" its goal of 100,000 visitors, said spokesperson Anne Marie Wagener.

The Minneapolis museum's reputation for generosity in lending art to other institutions was the reason the Louvre was willing to extend the exhibit's U.S. tour, Feldman said.

When she met Louvre Director Henri Loyrette in New York in February, he recalled having recently seen a painting on loan from the Minneapolis museum to a show in Versailles, France. Two years ago the institute also lent the Louvre an important 18th century French picture by A.L. Girodet. Those and other loans to European museums earned the goodwill that set the stage for the Louvre's Minneapolis show, Feldman said.

One of the rarest paintings in the show, Vermeer's "The Astronomer," has never before been shown in North America. Painted in 1668, it is one of only 34 or 36 paintings (experts disagree) done by the Dutch master whose serene, light-filled images have inspired popular novels and films such as "Girl With a Pearl Earring."

More subtle than sizzle

It spans 4,000 years and features more than 60 "masterpieces" from the Louvre's eight departments. About half of the show will be antiquities, sculpture, ceramics and silver from ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, Mesopotamia, Turkey and elsewhere in the Middle East, plus Medieval to 19th century European sculpture, including a life-size bronze lion battling a serpent.

To illustrate the difference between authentic masterpieces and fakes, curators also included a 20th century forgery of an Egyptian head.

Tickets will go on sale next summer. Prospective visitors may sign up now for e-mail updates at www.artsmia.org or call 612-870-6323.

Admission to the Minneapolis institute is generally free, but tickets are sold for special exhibitions. A 2003 display of Egyptian antiquities from the British Museum was the previous most expensive exhibit ($10-$12).

Museums rarely cover their costs through tickets alone, however. Even record attendance would not translate directly into income because the museum's 26,000 members will likely receive free or discounted tickets. Gift-shop sales, sponsorships and new memberships help offset the expense of special shows.

In case you're wondering, the Louvre never lends Leonardo's iconic "Mona Lisa." The 500-year-old painting only leaves its climate-controlled -- and heavily guarded -- museum case for periodic check-ups on its fragile condition.