One day after Laurence des Cars resigned from her position as president of the Louvre Museum, President Emmanuel Macron appointed Christophe Leribault, the director of the Palace of Versailles, to take her place. The decision, a government spokesperson told Le Parisien, was annoucned by Macron at the Council of Ministers meeting on Wednesday.
Leribault, 63, was appointed to lead Versailles in 2024; there he succeeded Catherine Pégard, whose leadership—like des Cars’s—had been questioned, according to Le Monde.
He is a curator with an expertise in 18th century art. He began his career at Musée Carnavalet in Paris in 1990 and spent 15 years there. He served as a curator in the Louvre’s Department of Graphic Arts in 2006, before becoming director of the Eugène-Delacroix National Museum in Paris in 2007. In 2012, he became director of the Petit Palais, which houses the CIty of Paris Museum of Fine Arts, and, in 2021, was appointed president of the Musée d’Orsay. There, he replaced des Cars as well.
Leribault’s primary mission, a government spokesperson told Le Parisien, is to “strengthen the safety and security of the building, the collections and the people, to restore a climate of trust and to carry out, with all the teams, the necessary transformations at the museum.”
In the same Council of Ministers meeting, Macron also appointed Annick Lemoine, the current director of the Petit Palais, as director of the Musée d’Orsay and the Orangerie. That post has been open since Sylvain Amic, the previous director, died last August. She will start March 19.
Both appointees “will be able to continue and consolidate the policies implemented by their predecessors while bringing a vision and restoring serenity to the institutions under their charge,” the spokesperson added.
Des Cars, the first woman director of the Louvre, submitted her resignation to Macron on Tuesday after well over a year of internal turmoil due to deteriorating conditions at the museum, the infamous heist of $100 million in crown jewels, several strikes, and a ticketing scam. A planned $778 million expansion announced early last year, which would have added a 33,000-square foot gallery for the Mona Lisa, was postponed indefinitely earlier this month.
