ART

Parisians took their first official look this weekend at a gigantic, modern glass pyramid set amid the stone courtyards of the Louvre. President Francois Mitterrand, who views the renovation of one of the world’s best-known museums as the major cultural achievement of his seven-year term, inaugurated the controversial monument by Chinese-born American architect I. M. Pei. Pei, perhaps best known for the National Gallery East Wing in Washington and the still-incomplete Bank of China in Hong Kong, has called the Louvre commission “the most important of my life.” After its fall opening to the public, tourists will enter the glass structure to gain access to the museum.