At a time when the subprime crisis is dragging down the global economy and forcing companies to review their support for the arts, Bernard Arnault, France's richest man, is going his own way.

The billionaire chairman of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA is pressing ahead with plans for a 100 million-euro ($140 million) art foundation. The world's biggest luxury-goods maker is also backing shows such as a Pablo Picasso exhibition in Paris that opens on Oct. 8 and one by German artist Gerhard Richter at London's Serpentine Gallery.

``It's a way of showing that luxury, which often has an arrogant, elitist, egotistical image, can be generous,'' says Jean-Paul Claverie, the arts-patronage adviser to Arnault.

Arnault's art ambitions rival those of billionaire Francois Pinault, who controls French retailer PPR, owner of Gucci. Pinault dropped plans to build an art foundation on the edges of Paris and now owns the 18th-century Palazzo Grassi exhibition venue in Venice. He has won a bid to turn a disused Venice customs building into a contemporary-arts center.

Claverie denies that Arnault's art foundation is copying Pinault. ``It's an idea that Bernard Arnault and I have been toying with since 1992, and it couldn't happen then,'' he says. ``To each his life, his passions, his past, and his future.''

French cultural commentators see no harm in the wealthy boosting their cultural credentials.

Billionaire Glory

``If French billionaires want to make museums, even it's for their own glory, I'm all in favor, especially if the public benefits,'' says Didier Rykner, an art historian who runs the Tribune de l'Art Web site (and its English-language equivalent The Art Tribune) and led a petition against the Louvre Museum's future offshoot in Abu Dhabi.

Claverie wears a tiny red ribbon on his suit lapel -- a discreet reminder that he was awarded the Legion d'Honneur, France's highest honor -- and works out of the top-floor executive suite of LVMH's mahogany-paneled Paris headquarters.

A few art gems lean on his shelf: a bull's-eye drawing given to him by Damien Hirst, and a contorted pastel head by Francis Bacon, dedicated to him by the artist two years before his death.

``He was a very strange but a very endearing being,'' Claverie recalls.

Explaining the rationale behind LVMH's art sponsorship, Claverie says the company's 71,000 employees and more than 60 brands ``are often competing on a single product.

``There was a desire on the part of Bernard Arnault to federate the group around common values.''

Picasso Shows

The LVMH-sponsored exhibition in Paris, ``Picasso et les Maitres'' (``Picasso and the Masters''), places the Spaniard's art next to works he admired by Velazquez, Goya, Gauguin, Manet and Delacroix. It is not the first time that LVMH has helped a show from the very earliest stages. Claverie says it was he who, with Picasso's son Claude, had the idea for the ``Matisse/Picasso'' exhibition staged in Paris, London and New York in 2002-3.

Since 1991, LVMH has sponsored more than 30 major exhibitions, including on Cezanne, Chardin, turn-of-the-century Vienna, and Giacometti. In New York, LVMH backed ``Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years'' at the Museum of Modern Art last year. In China, it supported an exhibition of French Impressionist Masters in 2004-5 and it is staging a Beijing show on Chinese artists inspired by Christian Dior fashions.

By 2010 or 2011, the Louis Vuitton Foundation in western Paris will open to present LVMH's own collection and hold one-off shows.

Bilbao Shock

The Gehry-designed foundation, announced in 2006, was also something Claverie had a hand in. Five or six years ago, he took Arnault to see Gehry's titanium Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Arnault had an ``aesthetic shock,'' and met the Pritzker prize-winning architect a few weeks later.

Also on the shelf are black-and-white photos of Claverie chatting with Gehry. ``I can't remember what I was telling him, but it was making him laugh,'' he comments.

The foundation will be located inside the Jardin d'acclimatation, in Paris's Bois de Boulogne, where a bowling alley stood. It will be run by Suzanne Page, who previously ran the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

LVMH's chairman has lofty hopes for the building's appeal. ``Mr. Arnault often says that as many people will visit the building as will go see the Eiffel tower,'' says Claverie, echoing his boss's optimism.

In an interview with the French weekly L'Express last month, Arnault said he hoped the foundation would open in 2010. He described the building as a ``cloud'' and said it was a ``bold and complex project to build.''

LVMH's 49-piece Richter artwork, ``4,900 Colors: Version II,'' will be at London's Serpentine Gallery through Nov. 16.

``Picasso and the Masters'' will be held mainly at the Grand Palais, with smaller shows at the Louvre Museum and the Musee d'Orsay. It will draw loans from Madrid's Prado museum, London's National Gallery, and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. It runs from Oct. 8, 2008, through Feb. 2, 2009.