The director of the Louvre, Laurence des Automobiles, has discovered herself in an uncomfortable place following the discharge of a report that states her grand, €666m plan for a brand new entrance and a subterranean advanced across the Mona Lisa is “financially unsound”—and emphasises the necessity to prioritise safety upgrades as a substitute.
On Thursday 6 November, Pierre Moscovici, the chairman of the Cour des comptes, the French state’s auditing physique, launched the report, which factors out plenty of wrongdoings within the administration of the museum.
Revealed within the wake of the audacious heist on the Louvre, throughout which French crown jewels had been stolen, the report confirms that the museum “has accrued appreciable delays within the deployment of safety gear”.
“The theft was made attainable due to these inadequacies,” Pierre Moscovici advised journalists at a press convention. He identified {that a} ten-year infrastructure improve launched in 2018 by the Louvre’s former director, Jean-Luc Martinez, has solely obtained €3m, which is simply 4% of the deliberate €83m price range.
A hearth prevention scheme, in the meantime, continues to be resulting from be applied greater than 20 years after technical research had been undertaken to assist it, he mentioned.
Lack of safety
The problem of the protection of the collections takes up solely two pages of the 153-page report, which was written earlier than the 19 October housebreaking. The audit as a substitute largely challenges the premise of Des Automobiles’ grand plan for the brand new entrance and the development of a 22 000 sq m advanced beneath the Louvre, across the Mona Lisa and an exhibition corridor. The plans had been introduced by the French president Emmanuel Macron in January as a part of broader renovation, estimated between €700m and €800m, which he mentioned would mark a “new renaissance” of the museum.
Cour des comptes revealed that the price range for this venture, estimated at €450m a couple of months in the past, has already blown out to €666m—a forty five% rise, on “a really low estimate”. It considers the plan as “financially unrealistic”, and fears it might unfairly take away sources wanted extra urgently for the infrastructure modifications.
The report urges the Louvre to as a substitute velocity up the implementation of a €450m plan—additionally introduced by Macron—centred on the museum’s infrastructure, stressing that the museum has the monetary sources for this funding. Moscovici emphasised, nevertheless, that this implies “it has to repair it as an absolute precedence. The time for ready is over.”
In its reply, the Louvre described the report as “unbalanced” and mentioned that it “doesn’t bear in mind the long run”. The infrastructure works, an announcement from the museum mentioned, have to be “articulated into the venture of the Louvre Renaissance, in any other case we’d solely go midway”.
