ABOVE: Bernard Arnault, left, has approached Frank Gehry about building a swank new museum to house his art collection in Paris, after François Pinault, right, ditched similar plans.

There was some chatter this spring when French billionaire François Pinault annouced that he was scrapping his plans to build an elaborate new contemporary art museum in Paris and decamp to Venice. Now, Pinault’s nemesis, LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault, has apparently taken up the fallen cause and intends to build his own museum there, to hold his own equally voluminous collection of contemporary art. The Art Newspaper reports that Arnault has contacted architectural superfreak Frank Gehry about designing a small but flashy museum in the west end of the Bois de Boulogne district.

The whole story is steeped in a rich gravy of personal resentment, one-upmanship, and egomania. Pinault previously beat Arnault when Mr. P’s luxury-goods company, PPR, beat out Mr. A’s luxury-goods company, LVMH, for control of Italian luxury-goods company Gucci. When Pinault threw his hissy fit last year and took his art collection to Venice, he accused the Paris bureaucracy of killing his grand plans for a major new museum; now Arnault, all sweetness, is proposing a more modest project and commissioning a who’s who of modern artists to craft outdoor sculptures for his 12-hectare site. In any case, the building permit hasn’t been issued yet, so it’s hardly a done deal, but it’s fun to watch billionaires squabble.

LINK: The Art Newspaper > François Pinault has abandoned plans to build a contemporary museum in Paris. Will his arch rival do it instead?