Louvre Museum is 'at its limit', warns new president

People queue up outside the Louvre Museum.
Michel Euler/AP
The Louvre, in crisis since the great robbery of October last year, is "at the limit" and will need to invest large sums of money to renew its old infrastructures, said this Wednesday (17) the president of the most visited museum in the world.
"We can say bluntly: despite its imposing majesty, despite the daily commitment of its teams, it is a Louvre at its limits", declared Christophe Leribault in a French Senate committee. "Its equipment, its infrastructures are reaching the end of a cycle."
The theft of several Crown jewels on October 19th highlighted the security failures and the delays accumulated in the modernization of the facilities of the Parisian museum, which last year received nine million visitors.
"We are at a crossroads: the emergencies relating to the building are accumulating and we are facing a barrier of investments, which, evidently, is not what we want to hear", he declared Leribault, appointed to the position in February.
The official also referred to the major Louvre renovation project, announced in early 2025 by French President Emmanuel Macron. This plan includes the creation of an additional entrance to the museum and the construction, underground, of a new room to exhibit the Mona Lisa, the star of the art gallery.
There are two projects with a total estimated value of 660 million euros (R$ 3.88 billion), within a global amount of around 1 billion euros (R$ 5.88 billion reais).
"These 660 million need to be covered through patronage", explained Leribault, adding that around half of this amount would come from the exploitation of the Louvre brand in Abu Dhabi, where the museum opened a headquarters in 2017.
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"The rest will have to be obtained in the coming months from large companies and individual donors", he detailed.
When talking about the museum's security, Leribault stated that "the emergencies" and announced the implementation, from January 2027, of the new perimeter video surveillance system.
"Of course, we urgently installed some additional cameras in absolutely critical locations whose deficiencies we had noted, but you cannot create a whole new network with hundreds of cameras without reinforcing the technical structure", he explained.
"The wound of the theft and the trauma of the months that followed continue to be very intense in the museum", he admitted.
New director takes command of the Louvre after the theft of jewels and a series of internal crises

Source: G1