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At the Louvre, the Mona Lisa Will Get Her Own Room as Museum Expands


The Louvre Museum in Paris will transfer the Mona Lisa to a newly created exhibition house, President Emmanuel Macron of France introduced on Tuesday as he unveiled sweeping plans to develop and renovate the world’s largest and most visited museum.

Speaking in entrance of Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece itself, Mr. Macron additionally stated that the Louvre would create a brand new entrance in its easternmost facade, close to the Seine River, to alleviate overcrowding on the museum, which is swarmed by almost 9 million guests yearly.

The huge renovation, which will even embody overhauling growing old infrastructure across the museum, can be paid for partly by rising ticket costs for guests from non-European Union international locations, beginning in 2026, Mr. Macron stated.

The aim is to welcome way more guests than as we speak — Mr. Macron set a goal of 12 million guests per 12 months — in significantly better situations, the French president stated.

The tradition ministry will set up a world architectural competitors this 12 months, and the brand new entrance is predicted to be completed by 2031 on the newest, he added.

“Long reside the Louvre’s new renaissance!” he stated on the finish of a fastidiously choreographed speech, because the Mona Lisa’s well-known gaze peered from behind him.

Already, the museum has capped each day attendance at 30,000 individuals, who enter through the Louvre Pyramid, a glass-and-steel construction designed by the architect I.M. Pei within the Nineteen Eighties, through the museum’s final main overhaul. The entrance was supposed to welcome half the guests it at the moment does.

An estimated 80 % of these crowds come for the Mona Lisa — a magnet for droves of selfie-snapping vacationers that has turn into a crowd-control headache, and for a number of years there have been ideas the portray ought to be moved to its personal room.

Mr. Macron stated that the devoted room for the Mona Lisa can be considered one of a number of new exhibition areas created beneath the Cour Carrée, the Louvre’s easternmost courtyard, and linked to the prevailing museum. The Mona Lisa can be accessible individually from the remainder of the museum, he added, with its personal ticket.

The huge renovations introduced by Mr. Macron come at a fragile time for France, which has been mired in political turmoil since final summer time and is at the moment dealing with intense belt-tightening in public funds. The new entrance can be paid for by the museum’s personal funds, Mr. Macron stated.

But the Louvre — a former palace that was house to France’s kings till 1682 — is far more than a vacationer attraction. It is an emblem of France’s cultural clout, and an necessary soft-power instrument for the French State.

For Mr. Macron, who’s weakened domestically, placing his imprint on main renovations on the museum is a method to burnish his legacy, specialists say — just like his five-year guess on restoring the fire-ravaged Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, which in the end paid off.

“He began his presidency on the Louvre, and he needs to finish it on the Louvre,” Julien Lacaze, the president of Sites et Monuments, stated of Mr. Macron, who delivered his first time period victory speech in entrance of the glass and metal pyramid in 2017. The iconic pyramid is a footprint left by considered one of Mr. Macron’s predecessors as president, François Mitterrand, who commissioned the construction within the Nineteen Eighties.

“He is engaged on the picture that can stay in historical past books,” added Mr. Lacaze, whose affiliation campaigns for the safety of France’s architectural and pure heritage.

Mr. Macron’s announcement got here lower than every week after the each day newspaper Le Parisien reported that Laurence des Cars, the Louvre’s president, had warned in a confidential memo to the French tradition ministry that the museum was in determined want of a revamp due to important put on and tear — together with water leaks and temperature variations that endangered artworks.

Other issues outlined within the memo included inadequate restrooms and meals services, poor signage and overcrowding. The memo warned that the Louvre’s pyramid was structurally outdated — overheated through the summer time, and too noisy year-round.

“Everywhere the constructing is struggling,” Ms. des Cars stated on Tuesday earlier than Mr. Macron’s speech within the Louvre’s Salle des États gallery, the place the Mona Lisa is at the moment stored.

“Each day this very room is the scene of intense agitation,” she stated, a spot the place pissed off and drained vacationers jostle to catch a glimpse the portray.

“The Louvre’s distinctive customer numbers are usually not a curse, they’re a supply of pleasure,” she added. “It’s additionally a problem to reinvent ourselves and stay trustworthy to our public service mission.”

Some critics stated that Mr. Macron — diminished politically and unable to run for a 3rd time period in 2027 — had latched onto the Louvre in hopes of preserving his legacy.

Labor unions representing among the museum’s 2,300 workers acknowledged that the constructing wanted to be renovated however stated creating an entire new entrance was not a precedence, arguing as an alternative that the cash can be higher used to rent extra workers and to overtake dangerous insulation, defective elevators and damaged pipes.

Sud-Solidaires, one of many labor unions, stated in an announcement final week {that a} “mammoth venture” just like the one to open an entire new entrance would “carry completely no answer to the issues” however would “undoubtedly enable Emmanuel Macron to undertake the function of savior that he’s so keen on.”

But Mr. Macron’s workplace insists that getting personally concerned within the Louvre’s renovation is a part of his job description, not a ploy to attain political factors, and that the bulletins have been made in shut collaboration with the tradition ministry and the museum’s administration.

“His function is to guard every part that’s a part of the nation’s heritage, pleasure and affect,” stated a presidential official on Monday, who in step with French apply was not approved to talk publicly forward of Mr. Macron’s speech.

The museum has an annual price range of roughly $300 million, about 60 % of which comes from its personal sources like ticket gross sales and model licensing, with the remaining funded by the French state.

Mr. Lacaze, the heritage professional, stated that the museum was hardly falling aside, however wanted to higher handle the movement of holiday makers, who elbow previous one another to see the Mona Lisa or the Venus de Milo however usually depart rooms stuffed with different masterpieces close to empty.

“It’s the most important museum on the planet, however vacationers solely come to see 5 artistic endeavors,” he stated, including that the museum wanted to do extra to advertise its huge assortment — almost 500,000 items, of which solely about 30,000 are on show — with a purpose to peel guests away from the principle points of interest.

Better to “take advantage of” of what the Louvre already has, he stated, “earlier than embarking on gargantuan spending.”

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Written by EGN NEWS DESK

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