Laurence Des Cars, presently head of the Musée d’Orsay, will move across the Seine and take the reins of the Louvre museum, world’s largest art museum, in September.
If the headline seems to focus on her gender because it is a first, it is also clearly not the reason for her appointment; she comes with fifteen years of high-level museum posts behind her and a reputation as an art scholar who has organized major exhibitions for museums around the world, many of them exploring social issues in relation to art.
Picking up on that theme, she told France Inter Radio that she wants the Louvre to be “an echo chamber of society.” That stand has led to ground-breaking exhibitions such as the Orsay’s show two years ago on ‘Black Models from Gericault to Matisse’ and also to a strong stance on returning art looted by the Nazis during World War II, an issue faced at Orsay, which returned Gustav Klimt’s ‘Roses’ during her tenure.
The Louvre has made major strides in the past few years under retiring director Jean-Luc Martinez, including opening more space for visitors and for more of the museum’s vast collections, working to make it a less elitist experience. Over the past few years, annual visitors grew to over ten million before the pandemic. In part because of that and in part because of the pandemic, the Louvre has accelerated work to put more of its collectons online, with over half a million items now viewable remotely.
Image: The Louvre and Pyramide at night (PHeymont/TravelGumbo)
