Is it nigh impossible to get young folks into the fusty old Louvre? Not if you put a gothic, sci-fi, or manga spin on it.

ARTnews’ Sasha Watson reports that the Louvre has commissioned a series of graphic novels featuring the venerated institution itself. Published by Futuropolis, a French graphic novel house, the series is available in english translations.

In its latest installation, Eric Liberge‘s On the Odd Hours, the Louvre’s collection comes alive at night with the ringing of a gong by a secret society of night guards (something like a cross between the Ben Stiller movie, A Night at the Museum and Harry Potter?)

Fabrice Douar, the deputy director of the museum’s publishing division believes that in commissioning these works, he is meeting the Louvre’s directive to demonstrate a continuity between contemporary art to the Louvre’s long canonized collection.

Douar tells ARTnews, “The graphic novel is heir to the classical art of drawing. We wanted, in part, to shake up the dusty image of the museum by inviting people to see the back-and-forth between contemporary art and our collections.”

According to Watson, six more books are in the offing, including Hirohiko Araki‘s Rohan au Louvre (Rohan at the Louvre), a manga twist on the museum that is expected to be published sometime in 2012.

For more on this, see ARTnews, Sasha Watson’s The Louvre commisions stories

Photo from ARTnews: Exerpt From Eric Liberge’s On the Odd Hours

©2008 FUTUROPOLIS/MUSÉE DU LOUVRE EDITIONS. ©2010 NBM FOR ENGLISH TRANSLATION