To the winners go the spoils: Histories of early 20th-century American art and architecture were written by modernist proponents who criticized the achievementsof the American Renaissance and City Beautiful designers or ignored them altogether.
The constant challenge of still-unanswered questions regarding how and why this work came about, as well as its potential meanings, serves to remind us that the overwhelming visual power ofart trumps all even when we contemplate important achievements we have not yet learned to understand fully.
Nevertheless, the Louvre successfully ties Islam to glorious achievements, effectively injecting art into the debate surrounding France's growing Muslim population and fear of Islamic fundamentalism.