Portal:The arts/Selected anniversaries/August


 * 10 August 1793 – The Musée du Louvre (pictured), one of the world's largest museums, opens with an exhibition of 537 paintings
 * 16 August 1945 – American ballerina Suzanne Farrell for whom George Balanchine created many new ballets is born in Cincinnati, Ohio
 * 18 August 1933 – Polish director and screen-writer Roman Polanski, whose Academy Award winning films include Knife in the Water, Rosemary's Baby, and The Pianist, is born in Paris
 * 19 August 1953 – Gholam-Hossein Saedi, one of the first modern playwrights of Iran, is arrested during the 1953 Iranian coup d'état
 * 30 August 1953 – Gaetano Merola, the Italian conductor and founder of the San Francisco Opera, dies in San Francisco while conducting a performance of Madame Butterfly