Excerpt:
The Louvre doesn't do things on a small scale. When the world's most famous and most popular museum — it hosts more than nine million visitors a year — decided to add a new Islamic art wing, it took $125 million and a decade to build.
Opened earlier this year, its 18,000 works of art have drawn eager crowds. But it remains to be seen whether it will do anything to help bridge the growing divide between most French and the country's 4 million Muslim residents during an especially tense time.
Designed by Milanese architect Mario Bellini and his French colleague Rudy Ricciotti, the new addition's wave-like, gold-colored rooftop strikes a sharp contrast to the austere glass pyramid designed by I.M. Pei 23 years ago to serve as the museum's main entrance.