With Laurence des Cars, a woman takes over the management of the Louvre for the first time.
The 54-year-old was appointed the new President-Director of the largest museum in the world on May 26th.
She will take up her post, which is limited to five years, on September 1;
until then she will work side by side with Jean-Luc Martinez.
The outgoing director, who had unsuccessfully applied for a third term, had come under fire in recent months.
Laurence des Cars' most urgent task will be to bring the ties between the museum management and staff - namely the largely incapacitated conservators - that were tense to the breaking point under Martinez, back to an acceptable, average level between nodding and laissez-faire.
It will be just as important to cope with the corona crisis and its consequences.
With over seventy percent foreign visitors at normal times, the Louvre is more vulnerable than any other French museum to travel restrictions and travel fears.
The loss of income since March 2020 currently amounts to around 90 million euros;
they were only half compensated by the state.
What to expect
What the car promised in a radio interview on Wednesday is still quite general: The Louvre could “be completely contemporary, it can open up to the world of today and at the same time tell us about the past, the present through the splendor of the Lending relevance to the past. ”(“ Le Louvre peut être pleinement contemporain, il peut s'ouvrir au monde d'aujourd'hui tout en nous parlant du passé, en donnant une pertinence au présent par l'éclat du passé ”). She wanted to take away the fear of the threshold for future visitors and put the young audience at the center - every candidate for the management of a temple of culture plays variations on these kinds of topics: They are the wise men politicians like to hear. The announcements are more precise,the museum should stay open longer in the evening and receive a new department for the art of Byzantium and the Christian Orient.
Finally, the car promises to make the dialogue between ancient art and today's world a priority. Under Martinez's predecessor, Henri Loyrette, the painter and object artist Michelangelo Pistoletto, the director Patrice Chéreau and the later Nobel Prize winner Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio received “Cartes blanches” for series of events; Anselm Kiefer and Cy Twombly created commissioned works for the palace. Des Cars, who learned the art of conservation at the Musée d'Orsay when Loyrette ran the Musée d'Orsay as a house for Western art from 1848 to 1914, has had artists such as Marlene Dumas, Tracey Emin and Isabella in its footsteps since 2017 Rossellini invited.
In addition, she opened the Musée d'Orsay for social and contemporary issues in 2019 with exhibitions such as “The Black Model, from Géricault to Matisse”. These also include the complex of problems “looted art”. Des Cars supported the restitution process, thanks to which a Klimt painting from the Paris Museum was recently returned to the heirs of the Austrian owner who was murdered in 1942. It was finally able to attract significant donations and donations - last year, for example, a check from an anonymous benefactor from America for twenty million euros, thanks to which an education center, an external documentation center and a new presentation space for one will be opened by 2026 Part of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection will be possible.At the Louvre, where Martinez pissed off many patrons, the new director's talent should certainly be welcome.