A Franco-American 'Cloud' in Paris.

In case you didn’t know, France’s richest man is Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of French luxury goods empire LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA. He is also the world's 7th-richest person according to Forbes magazine.

While American wealthy men make philanthropic decisions by giving their wealth to charities, Arnault has also made a philanthropic decision of his own by announcing the building of a new contemporary art museum in Paris. Arnault hired no less than American architect Frank Gehry, the Canadian-American architect behind the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. This time, the money is French and the art is American.

For those of you familiar with Paris, the new museum is supposed to be built in Le Jardin d'Acclimatation—in the Bois Du Boulogne (a popular children’s park on the western edge of Paris).

As always with Ghery and in the tradition of other art museums in Paris (think of the Louvre pyramid and the Pompidou Centre), this one is likely to bring controversyl. It kind of looks like an insect cocoon or some alien spacecraft crashed on earth but its creator described it as a cloud:

"The garden brought to mind Marcel Proust and Remembrance of Things Past," Gehry told the crowd of journalists. "I could picture him there with his friends. And in this garden, which is for children, the idea of making a strong, formal gesture seemed inappropriate."

"It's a cloud of glass - magical, ephemeral, all transparent," he said. It was, he added, "not stodgy".

"I wanted to create something that every time you approach, it shows a different character depending on the light and the time of day. I wanted to emulate everything this word 'transparence' means."

The building will be 4,200-square meter or 45,200 sq. feet and will cost some €100 million (US$126 million) and should be completed by 2010. (IHT)