Embattled by an avalanche of controversies in the wake of the theft of crown jewels last October, the director of the Musée du Louvre, Laurence des Cars, resigned on Tuesday (24 February).
Des Cars presented her resignation to French president Emmanuel Macron, who praised “an act of responsibility, at a time when the greatest museum in the world needs stability and a strong new commitment to undertake the work for its security, its modernisation” and the controversial plan called the “Louvre New Renaissance”. A spokesperson for the Presidential Palace said that her successor will be appointed on Wednesday (25 February).
Des Cars has now been asked to lead a mission for the cooperation between museums of the G7 member countries, under French chairmanship this year.
One day after the 19 October heist, Des Cars had proposed her resignation to the French culture minister, Rachida Dati, who declined to accept it. Since then, scandals have been piling up and she has been struggling to keep her post, facing mounting calls in Parliament for her departure.
A series of official reports underlined the “considerable delays” in the maintenance of the infrastructure, “in favour of an event-driven policy”. Since her arrival, in May 2021, less than 3% of the museum’s budget has been spent on safety plans, against theft, fire or floods. Instead, with president Macron’s support, she launched an ambitious plan for a new entrance and a subterranean gallery built around its star attraction, Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, at an estimated cost of €666m.
The unions representing workers at the Louvre demanded the “Louvre New Renaissance” project to be dropped, and advocated instead for spending to focus on badly needed basic technical works that could add up to €500m. In mid-December, workers launched a series of rolling strikes, the longest in the museum’s history.
Incidents of various sorts and sizes—from significant to catastrophic—have not stopped since the heist in October: leaks in the galleries and a library; rooms closed because of cracking beams and a ten-year long ticket fraud. Last Thursday, members of the French parliament who are part of an investigation committee looking into issues at the museum denounced a “hyper presidency which has accumulated failures”. The chair of the committee, Alexandre Portier, added that in “any other country or establishment, this list of failures would have since long led to the departure of the director”.
