New director of the Louvre, a choice in times of crisis

Paris. Christophe Leribault was appointed yesterday to head the Louvre Museum, just hours after the previous director, Laurence des Cars, submitted her resignation. The change of leadership at the world’s most visited museum comes after the theft of the crown jewels in October and a series of failures that hit confidence in one of the country’s most treasured institutions.

The rapid transition seeks to restore order in a venue affected by a harsh succession of crises: theft, labor unrest, water leaks, aging infrastructure and an alleged $12 million ticket fraud scheme that would have lasted for a decade.

It also protects a politically charged project for President Emmanuel Macron, who has made the renovation of the Louvre a cultural plan emblematic of his legacy as he looks toward the end of his term next year.

The government presented Leribault, a veteran museum director, as a steady hand for a battered institution, with responsibility for both the Louvre’s security overhaul and its modernization.

A specialist in the 18th century and trained at the École du Louvre, Leribault has directed the largest museums in France, including the Petit Palais and the Musée d’Orsay.

He was recently in charge of Versailles, one of the largest heritage sites in France, with an intense flow of visitors and an annual budget of about 170 million euros (almost 3.5 billion pesos).

His resume makes him a typical choice for times of crisis: a curator-administrator molded by the French museum system and accustomed to public scrutiny, large crowds and the gears of the cultural power of the State.

Des Cars was not just any director. Appointed in 2021, she became the first woman to lead the Louvre, a symbolic break in a palace built for kings.

For many in the French cultural world, his departure finally answered the question that had hovered over the Louvre since the robbery: How could a breach of that magnitude occur in one of the country’s most symbolic institutions without any top brass falling?

Macron’s office accepted his resignation as an “act of responsibility,” noting that the museum now needs calm and a new push for security and modernization projects.

Des Cars declared to Le Figaro on Tuesday that he had become a target of criticism and could no longer carry out the museum’s transformation in the same institutional climate.

The theft of jewelry valued at 88 million euros (1,785 million pesos) was the trigger, but not the whole story.

Loss of basic control

Labor unrest, leaks, aging infrastructure and a separate ticket fraud scandal had already left the Louvre with the image, in Paris and beyond, of a celebrated institution that was losing its grip on the basics.

A spontaneous strike in June left visitors stranded outside its glass pyramid and exposed workers’ outrage over overcrowding, understaffing and other conditions.

In a rare interview with The Associated Press just days before Des Cars’ resignation, the Louvre’s second-in-command, General Administrator Kim Pham, called fraud at a museum of this scale “statistically inevitable,” although he also acknowledged shortcomings and said controls had been tightened.

He mentioned the magnitude: 86 thousand square meters, 35 thousand works exhibited and about 9 million visitors a year.

Privately, Louvre officials and others in the French museum scene make a more direct point: Old stone buildings leak.

The Louvre is that problem multiplied by a thousand: a palace complex from the Middle Ages to modernity in the middle of a dense capital, not an enclosure contained in the outskirts.

Pham put that argument in more diplomatic terms, describing the Louvre as a historic building with “many layers of history” dating back to the beginning of the 13th century.

The Louvre is in the center of Paris, with tourist pressure, traffic, multiple access points and the daily wear and tear that comes with being both a monument and a massive destination.

As Macron nears the end of his time in office – his last term ends next year – the renovation of the Louvre has become his signature cultural project, his version of the big bets on museums and monuments for which French presidents are often remembered.

It announced the Louvre New Renaissance plan in January 2025, a project that is now expected to cost around 1.15 billion euros (more than 23 billion pesos), according to French state auditors.

It includes a new entrance near the Seine, underground spaces and a room dedicated to Mona Lisa with timed access to alleviate crowding around the painting and improve visitor flow.

In France, presidents are often linked to great cultural works: Pompidou with the Center Pompidou, Mitterrand with the national library, Chirac with the Quai Branly museum. The Louvre is Macron’s project on that scale.

That’s one reason some in the French cultural world openly speculated why Des Cars didn’t leave in October, right after the robbery, even after offering to resign: Macron had so much riding on the Louvre plan that an immediate exit risked making his flagship cultural project look like it was collapsing.

The key question is security and the answer is: not enough or fast enough.

According to French media reports, the state auditor’s findings indicated that the Louvre’s security overhaul is not expected to be completed until 2032. Reports note that as of 2024, less than 40 percent of the museum’s rooms were equipped with cameras.

Since the theft there have been concrete measures. Additional measures, including anti-intrusion devices and vehicle barriers, were implemented by the end of 2025.

Des Cars also told lawmakers in November that the Louvre would install 100 external cameras by the end of 2026 and strengthen coordination with police, including a police station inside the venue.