Christophe Leribault, the Louvre’s president-director since February, addressed the French Senate Wednesday, delivering an assessment that the storied Paris museum is “à bout de souffle,” or “at the end of its rope.”
Speaking before the Senate’s Committee on Culture, Education, Communication and Sport, Leribault characterized the situation as being “at a crossroads” and that “urgent building issues are piling up, and we are facing a massive investment challenge.”
He added, “To put it bluntly: despite its imposing majesty and the daily dedication of its staff, the Louvre is running on fumes. Its facilities and infrastructure are reaching the end of their lifespan.”
The Louvre, the world’s most-visited museum, and its aging infrastructure and outdated security have been a topic of international headlines since October 2025, when a group of thieves entered the museum by ascending a cherry picker and breaking into an upper-floor window, grabbing $102 million worth of crown jewels from its Galerie d’Apollon within eight minutes, and then escaping the same way they came in. While French authorities have been making arrests in the case, the jewels have still not been recovered.
The aftermath of the heist sparked multiple partial closures, delayed openings, and staff strikes this past December and January, with staff saying they are overworked and understaffed and that the museum needed greater investment in its infrastructure.
The heist, staff strikes, and a ticketing fraud scandal ultimately caused Laurence des Car, the Louvre’s first women president-director, to resign in February. Leribault, then the president of the Palace of Versailles, was named as her replacement the next day.
Given the high-profile attention that the heist has received in the past nine months, Leribault told the Senate committee that he is addressing “the necessary emergencies head-on” and that a new video surveillance system around the museum’s perimeter would be installed beginning in January 2027. Additional cameras at “absolutely critical locations where we had noted deficiencies” have already been installed, he said.
The Louvre is also currently trying to raise funds for its Nouvelle Renaissance renovation that is expected to cost more than €1 billion ($1.2 billion). Announced in early 2025, the plans would include a new entrance and a dedicated 33,000-square-foot exhibition for the Mona Lisa, as well as address its security systems. In May, the Louvre announced that Selldorf Architects of New York and Studios Architecture Paris would oversee the renovation.
In his remarks to the Senate committee, Leribault said that the Louvre needs to raise €360 million ($418 million) “in the coming months,” according to Le Monde. He said that the Louvre is expected to receive €300 million from its licensing of the Louvre name to the Louvre Abu Dhabi, which opened in 2017, adding that he felt an “intense pressure to secure these funds.”
Leribault also defended the necessity for the Nouvelle Renaissance, saying that he believes that long lines, poor acoustics, and the climate of the current entrance hall “create poor conditions not only for our staff but also for visitors; the way they are received—even before their visit begins—falls short of what is expected of the world’s most visited museum, which damages the Louvre’s reputation.” He noted that its current entrance, via the I.M. Pei–designed Pyramid was designed for projections of 4 million visitors a year, but the Louvre currently receives over 9 million each year.
He continued, “These situations jeopardize the Louvre’s future. Yet, given the magic of its collections, we must be able to transform and repair the museum.”
