“This is my duty to alert as president on these questions and I have already done it many times,” she told some journalists on Thursday, on the sidelines of the presentation of a new exhibition .
If the room that houses the Mona Lisa, admired every day by about 20,000 visitors, is not affected by the damage, this is not the case with other parts of the building in the Sully wing (east side), confirmed to AFP a source close to the file. This vast space, which is deployed on four levels, in particular houses masterpieces of Chardin and Watteau.
Flood
In November 2023, an exhibition of drawings by Claude Gillot had to be closed and moved after a few days due to a flood in the clock room, according to the museum. Other temporary room closures have gone more unnoticed.
Questioned by AFP, the Élysée said that the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron had been “alerted” and that he had “exchanged several times with the Minister and the management of the museum”. He will “be expressed soon,” added a source close to the file.
In her note, Laurence des Cars also evokes the glass pyramid, inaugurated in 1988 and “structurally exceeded” in a building designed to accommodate four million visitors per year but which welcomed nearly nine million in 2024 (including nearly 80 % of foreign tourists) and ten million before the COVID crisis.
Other complaints: the lack of relaxation and restoration spaces, as well as sanitary facilities below international standards.
The Grand Palais and around forty museums in France, including the Louvre victims of a ransom attack
The museum is “far from being up to its universal influence,” deplored Christian Galani, a member of the National Bureau of the CGT Culture union with AFP, of which he is a representative in the Louvre.
According to him, “there is not one day going without seeing the degradation of the building, with crush painting, rooms, reserves and sometimes flooded workspaces, failures of electricity and delays in delays payment of providers for lack of budget “.
-Very variable temperatures
“Lack of staff, rooms are regularly closed and the working conditions of agents deteriorate with temperatures around 10-12 degrees sometimes in winter, and more than 30 degrees in summer,” said Galani, denouncing the Deletion of “more than 200 jobs in ten years”.
At least “100 million euros in investments would be necessary, in particular for priority catering work, of which only 26 million are provided in 2024, the rest having to spread until 2032, for lack of budget,” said to AFP another source close to the file.
In 2024, the Louvre benefited from 96 million euros in state subsidy, according to the Ministry of Culture, down according to the figures transmitted by the museum (103 million in 2023 and 111 million in 2022).
In 2023, he made 161 million euros in own revenue (against 141 million in 2022) thanks to the ticket office, patronage and rental of his spaces. In addition, 83 million euros in revenue from its brand license, including the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Not all figures for 2024 have not yet been made public.
Like many public institutions, the Louvre is increasingly put on its own resources, with increased privatization of its spaces, including the room of states (which houses the Mona Lisa), and seeks to multiply those from patronage.
On March 4, the museum will organize the annual dinner of its patrons aimed at raising funds, like the Met Gala in New York, with, he hopes, a number of international celebrities, including the muses of large houses sewing.
The Minister of Culture, questioned by the press in Paris, also mentioned her project to increase prices for non -European tourists. “I wanted a differentiated pricing policy,” she said, with the aim of entry into force on January 1, 2026.
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