Just over a year ago, Laurence des Cars, the intellectually brilliant (if famously prickly) former head of the largest and most-visited museum in the world, wrote a somewhat alarming note to her boss, France\u2019s culture minister.<\/p>\n
Des Cars, who on Tuesday resigned as president of the Louvre<\/a>, lamented<\/a> the advanced state of disrepair of the iconic museum\u2019s buildings and galleries.<\/p>\n The Louvre was overcrowded, she said. Facilities were substandard, technologies hopelessly outdated. Water was coming through the ceilings. Violent temperature swings were damaging artworks. The museum had reached a \u201cworrying level of obsolescence\u201d.<\/p>\n But she had the answer. Barely a week later, the first woman to run France\u2019s most prized cultural institution<\/a> stood beside Emmanuel Macron in front of its biggest draw, the Mona Lisa, as the French president proudly unveiled Louvre: New Renaissance, their radical, ambitious, \u20ac1bn plan for the museum\u2019s renovation.<\/p>\n Des Cars\u2019 immediate future, and that of the Louvre, looked assured. Alas, the year ahead had other plans. Rolling staff strikes, a decade-long ticket scam, an avalanche of ageing infrastructure issues and \u2013 most glaringly \u2013 a daring daylight heist<\/a> of \u20ac88m (\u00a377m) of crown jewels intervened.<\/p>\n Many in the art world think Laurence des Cars survived as long as she did because of Macron\u2019s concern for a legacy project. Photograph: Sarah Meyssonnier\/Reuters<\/p>\n No one doubts that the Louvre needs work. Spread across a sprawling 360,000 sq metre site, it is a city within a city. Originally a solid 12th-century fortress, it expanded into a gilded royal palace in the 16th century and, come the French Revolution, became a museum in 1793.<\/p>\n Its multilayered architectural fabric contains more than 400 rooms and about 9 miles of corridors. It has 600,000-plus items in its collection, about 35,000 of which are on permanent display. It is the world\u2019s largest museum. It was not designed for that purpose.<\/p>\n In its current iteration, the Louvre is intended to handle about 4 million visitors annually. Last year, helped by star attractions including the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace, it drew 9 million.<\/p>\n Something, undeniably, had to be done. The question is what. And how far it should be dictated by the projection of state cultural power (and French presidential ego-polishing).<\/p>\n Besides the necessary repairs and visitor improvements, des Cars\u2019 project, enthusiastically backed by Macron, includes giving Leonardo da Vinci\u2019s celebrated portrait a room of its own, with independent access.<\/p>\n That will entail excavating cavernous new exhibition spaces beneath the Cour Carr\u00e9e, the museum\u2019s eastern courtyard. The Louvre will also be graced with a \u201cnew grand entrance\u201d at the Colonnade de Perrault, also on the museum\u2019s eastern side.<\/p>\n The project\u2019s critics, who are many, call it pharaonic. The cost, estimated at more than \u20ac1.1bn, has drawn heavy criticism, from the state auditor and Louvre staff who feel the money could be far better spent. Experts question the true point.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s unnecessary, and it\u2019s harmful,\u201d said Didier Rykner, the editorial director of La Tribune de l\u2019Art, an art news website. \u201cBut des Cars convinced Macron. He sees it as the kind of grand legacy project that French presidents love to leave behind them.\u201d<\/p>\n The Louvre\u2019s last major refurb, in the 1980s, was commissioned by the late president Fran\u00e7ois Mitterrand and included the striking glass pyramid, designed by the Chinese-American I M Pei, that serves as the museum\u2019s current entrance.<\/p>\n Fran\u00e7ois Mitterrand\u2019s major refurb of the Louvre included the striking glass pyramid entrance. Photograph: Yoan Valat\/EPA<\/p>\n Previous leaders have given France such museum-monuments as the Pompidou Centre (Georges Pompidou), a new national library and an opera house (Mitterrand), and the Indigenous arts museum on the Quai Branly (Jacques Chirac).<\/p>\n Macron has an affinity with the Louvre. He chose it as the backdrop for his presidential victory speech in 2017<\/a>. But the fate of what the current president has come to see as his signature cultural legacy is starting to look a little less certain.<\/p>\n Many in the French arts world openly believe that is why des Cars survived as long as she did: Macron, who leaves office next spring, did not fancy risking his flagship legacy project, despite the many and varied misfortunes that piled up.<\/p>\n The museum\u2019s decaying infrastructure saw two water pipes burst this month alone, including in the Denon wing, home to the Mona Lisa. In November, more than 300 documents in the Library of Egyptian Antiquities were soaked by another flood.<\/p>\n The Campana gallery, famed for its Greek ceramics, closed late last year due to \u201cstructural weaknesses\u201d in the beams supporting the floor above. Offices in another part of the Sully wing have been moved due to the risk of floor collapse.<\/p>\n But since des Cars penned her resignation to the culture minister, Rachida Dati (who also left office this week to launch her attempt to be mayor of Paris), repair and maintenance issues have been the least of the museum\u2019s worries.<\/p>\n Macron celebrating his victory in 2017 in front of the Louvre. Photograph: Christophe Petit-Tesson\/EPA<\/p>\n Morale is at an all-time low, with the Louvre\u2019s 2,300 employees complaining of \u201cuntenable\u201d conditions, severe understaffing and poor pay. Strikes have forced the museum to close, wholly or partially, more than a dozen times since last summer.<\/p>\n \u201cStaff feel like they are the last bastion before collapse,\u201d employee unions said in a recent joint statement. Union spokespeople talk of a \u201ccatastrophic\u201d situation, unbearable tensions and \u201cabsurd and irresponsible\u201d management decisions.<\/p>\n This month, police arrested<\/a> nine people, including two museum employees and two guides, over a suspected ticket fraud scheme targeting Chinese tour groups that may, over the course of a decade, have cost the museum more than \u20ac10m (\u00a38.7m).<\/p>\n A heist gang used a stolen truck with an extendable ladder to reach the gallery\u2019s unsecured first-floor window. Photograph: Dimitar Dilkoff\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n And most spectacularly of all, one Sunday in October, a gang of four broke into the museum\u2019s Apollo gallery and made off with \u20ac88m (\u00a377m)<\/a> of diamond-studded Napoleonic jewellery in France\u2019s most dramatic heist in decades<\/a>.<\/p>\n The gang used a stolen truck with an extendable ladder to reach the gallery\u2019s entirely unsecured first-floor window, smashed display cases, grabbed the jewels, and fled on motorbikes in a seven-minute raid that made headlines around the world.<\/p>\n Four men have been arrested and are under investigation, but investigators are no closer to recovering the jewels. Even with Macron\u2019s support, it was inevitable that des Cars would eventually succumb to the cascade of reputational blows.<\/p>\n \u201cQuite clearly, here is a list of failings that, in many countries and many institutions, would have already led to her departure a long time ago,\u201d said Alexandre Portier<\/a>, the conservative chair of a parliamentary inquiry on museum security.<\/p>\n After she resigned, des Cars said that while she accepted at least part of the blame for the obvious security failings that led to the heist, she felt she \u201cmay be paying the price today\u201d for her \u201cclear-sighted\u201d earlier warnings and her proposed solution.<\/p>\n She was proud of her work at the museum since 2021, she told Le Figaro<\/a>, but had endured \u201can unprecedented media and political storm\u201d and \u201cstaying the course is not enough. You need to move forward. And conditions for that are no longer in place.\u201d<\/p>\n After two years running the Palace of Versailles, her successor, Christophe Leribault, now has one hell of a job. Leribault, 62, who previously ran the Mus\u00e9e d\u2019Orsay, is admired for turning around the Petit Palais in Paris with innovative exhibitions that boosted visitor numbers.<\/p>\n Christophe Leribault. Photograph: Beno\u00eet Tessier\/Reuters<\/p>\n His task at the Louvre will be of a different \u2013 and politically loaded \u2013 order. The culture ministry says the priorities are to \u201cstrengthen the safety and security of the building, its collections and people\u201d, restore trust and carry forward \u201cnecessary transformations\u201d.<\/p>\n Rykner is more specific. \u201cHe needs to get essential repairs done,\u201d he said. \u201cCalm down the staff unions, hire more people. That\u2019s not easy. He needs some new heads of department. And he has to develop a coherent acquisitions policy. It\u2019s a huge job.\u201d<\/p>\n Where \u201cNew Renaissance\u201d fits into all that is unclear. The Louvre\u2019s staff unions continue to denounce a \u201cphantasmagorical\u201d project they describe as<\/a> \u201cout of touch\u201d, \u201cincomprehensible\u201d and \u201cfar removed from the reality and needs of the Louvre\u201d.<\/p>\n The Cour des Comptes, France\u2019s state auditor, which has said<\/a> security and repairs are \u201cindispensable\u201d, is equally scathing, describing the project as \u201ca significant financial risk\u201d and arguing the money should be spent on urgent repairs and upgrades.<\/p>\n More tangibly, financing is not secure: the Louvre has said \u20ac200m to \u20ac300m will come from licensing fees from the museum\u2019s Abu Dhabi franchise<\/a>, with the remainder mainly from international donors \u2013 who, particularly in the US, appear highly reluctant<\/a>.<\/p>\n People queue to enter the Louvre, the largest and most-visited museum in the world. Photograph: Thomas Padilla\/AP<\/p>\n The timetable is strained. A shortlist of architects was meant to have been selected by April this year and the project launched by early 2027, before the presidential ballot at which Macron will step down. But that process was suspended in February.<\/p>\n Between its Abu Dhabi funds, cash reserves, ticket revenues and state subsidies, according to Rykner, the Louvre has the money to carry out essential repairs, maintenance and a more modest modernisation. The rest risks despoiling France\u2019s heritage.<\/p>\n It was also, he said, unnecessary. \u201cFor sure, pressure on the Pyramid and the Denon wing has to be alleviated. The Mona Lisa has to move,\u201d he said. \u201cBut three smaller additional entrances would be perfectly feasible \u2013 and there are other options for displaying the Mona Lisa.\u201d<\/p>\n The Louvre could also use the Grand Palais, renovated for the Olympics at a cost of more than \u20ac500m, for exhibition space, Rykner said. \u201cNew Renaissance is a pure vanity project,\u201d he said. \u201cLeribault should resist it until the president has gone.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just over a year ago, Laurence des Cars, the intellectually brilliant (if famously prickly) former head of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":["post-507118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}