As France Inter revealed this morning, it was Emmanuel Macron who asked Laurence des Cars last Friday to leave the presidency of the Louvre Museum, 7 months before the end of his first mandate. She announced her departure on Monday February 24 on the eve of a new hearing at the National Assembly. However, the President himself had appointed in May 2021 the then director of the Musée d’Orsay at the head of the largest museum in the world, then orchestrated the “New Renaissance” of the Louvre and finally refused the resignation of Laurence des Cars the day after the burglary of the Galerie d’Apollon last October.
This is just one of the oddities of the “Louvre crisis” which has caused a lot of ink to flow. Because paradoxically, while Laurence des Cars herself had alerted the deputies almost two years ago about “worrying obsolescence” of certain equipment then initiated in January 2025 a vast restoration plan, the president director found herself indicted after the burglary, guilty of having neglected the maintenance and security of the building for the benefit of glitter. The report of the Court of Auditors in November which focused mainly on the finances of the museum and the economic unsustainability of the creation of a new room under the Cour Carrée to exhibit the Mona Lisa subsequently provided details to those who had an interest in bringing down the president-director.
Starting with Rachida Dati who continued to ask for the head of Laurence des Cars through her supporters among the deputies and senators, distilling little sentences on the register “this needs to change”or appointing a mentor – Philippe Jost – who ultimately never carried out his mission.
Basically the main criticism leveled against the president was for not having accelerated the general security plan initiated by her predecessor Jean-Luc Martinez and for not having taken stock – despite warnings – of the flaws in the Apollo Gallery. A reproach that can be addressed to his predecessors as well as to the various directors of the Department of Art Objects. You don’t need to be a security expert to realize that it was very easy to enter the gallery and break the windows under the amazed gaze of helpless guards.
The Louvre then accumulated accidents – flooding of rooms, discovery of ticketing fraud – which in normal times would not have generated headlines but in this case only fueled a general feeling of crisis, maintained by a long-term strike by some of the staff. “The wave was strong. I was president, I was there to catch the thunder” she told Figaroadding “what makes me leave is not the strike but the impossibility of transforming the Louvre in the current institutional context”.
