Louvre Scandals, British Museum Debate, & No Rainbow Flags for Stonewall

February’s art headlines, or at least the juicy ones, seem to split between the Old and New Worlds. Let’s start in Paris, at the Louvre, where a honcho’s head rolled via the metaphorical guillotine. The Louvre’s director, Laurence des Cars, resigned on Tuesday. Des Cars was the Louvre’s first woman director, appointed by President Macron in 2021. I like her and worked with her on a couple of exhibitions in the early aughts when she was a curator at the Musée d’Orsay. She became the Orsay’s director and headed planning for the curatorial vision of Louvre Abu Dhabi, but Paris’s Louvre, the jewel in the French art crown, is by far a vaster operation.

Des Cars’s downfall began with a crown, a stolen crown, alas, among the €88 million ($102 million) in French royal jewels swiped in October by an amateur gang in broad daylight. The theft, an international story, exposed critical faults in the museum’s security infrastructure and protocols. For one, the security cameras weren’t working. Most of these faults were well known inside the Louvre, as was a mountain of deferred maintenance museum-wide. There was a general plan to address the campus’s sad condition, but des Cars wasn’t getting traction.

About the Author

Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

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February’s art headlines, or at least the juicy ones, seem to split between the Old and New Worlds. Let’s start in Paris, at the Louvre, where a honcho’s head rolled via the metaphorical guillotine. The Louvre’s director, Laurence des Cars, resigned on Tuesday. Des Cars was the Louvre’s first woman director, appointed by President Macron in 2021. I like her and worked with her on a couple of exhibitions in the early aughts when she was a curator at the Musée d’Orsay. She became the Orsay’s director and headed planning for the curatorial vision of Louvre Abu Dhabi, but Paris’s Louvre, the jewel in the French art crown, is by far a vaster operation.

Des Cars’s downfall began with a crown, a stolen crown, alas, among the €88 million ($102 million) in French royal jewels swiped in October by an amateur gang in broad daylight. The theft, an international story, exposed critical faults in the museum’s security infrastructure and protocols. For one, the security cameras weren’t working. Most of these faults were well known inside the Louvre, as was a mountain of deferred maintenance museum-wide. There was a general plan to address the campus’s sad condition, but des Cars wasn’t getting traction.