7 Things To Know About the Louvre's First Female President

7 Things To Know About the Louvre's First Female President

You probably already know that the most iconic museum in Europe and the world's largest art museum, France's Louvre, will be having its first female president in its 228 years of existence. But what you probably don't know are the characteristics that make this 54-year-old art historian and curator the best candidate and the credentials that marked her head-over-shoulder among the other contenders.

Laurence des Cars was on Wednesday, May 26, nominated by French President Emmanuel Macron to lead the affairs of the world-renowned Paris museum. Des Cars who had been the president of the Musée d’Orsay, also in Paris, will now take over from Jean-Luc Martinez, who was unsuccessful in his campaign for a third term, as president of the Louvre from September 1.

Martinez had been the museum's director since 2013. He has however been in an acting capacity since April 13 and was one of the four candidates, alongside Des Cars, who vied for the position. Laurent Le Bon, president of the Picasso museum, Sophie Makariou, president of the Guimet museum complete the quartet.

The race was so tight that Des Cars said her "heart was beating fast" when culture minister Roselyne Bachelot broke the news of her emergence to her.

Here are five things to keep in mind about the incoming director of the Louvre.

1. She is the daughter of a journalist and a writer, and the granddaughter of the novelist Guy des Cars.

2. She attended Paris-Sorbonne University and École du Louvre, where she also taught.

3. Ms Laurence des Cars is well-respected in the museum art sphere for being an expert on 19th and early 20th-century art. 

4. She joined the Musée d’Orsay in 1994 as a curator. And prior to 2017 when she rose to become the museum's head, she had led the Musée de l’Orangerie. She was also the scientific director of the France-Muséums agency where she worked on the development of the Louvre Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates' capital. During her time at each of these roles, she organized exhibitions, wrote papers and promoted art on a variety of platforms.

5. Being an advocate for connecting art to the young generation and current affairs, she is famous for spearheading programs that engage with contemporary concerns and draw the youth into museums. One of such is the Musée d’Orsay’s landmark exhibition in 2019, “Black models: from Géricault to Matisse,” which focused on overlooked Black subjects and racial and social themes in major paintings.

She also emphasized diversity, social issues, and programming that had an intergenerational appeal, and initiated the Orsay Grand Open project, aimed at expanding the institution’s programming and spaces.

6.  She is a crusader for the restitution of stolen art and correcting historical injustice. She told the AP that “a major museum must look history in the face, including looking back at the very history of our institutions.” 

She put these words to action during her time at the Musée d’Orsay where she undertook major restitution of art looted by the Nazis during World War 2. One major case is the return of Gustav Klimt’s Rosiers Sous Les Arbres (Rose Bushes Under The Trees) which had belonged to Nora Stiasny, a Jew, until the Nazis took it from her in Vienna, in 1938. Des Cars convinced the French culture ministry to return the work to Stiasny’s family.

7. Under her watch, the Musée d’Orsay saw a record 3.7 million visitors in 2019, and it was largely financing its own activities. 

The Louvre is evidently a larger portfolio than in all ramifications. In 2019, the museum was the most attended in the world, with 10 million visitors, but des Cars isn't deluded about the enormity of the task ahead.

“The Louvre can be fully contemporary, it can open up to the world of today while telling us about the past, giving relevance to the present through the brilliance of the past," she told The Guardian. "We need time, we need perspective, we are coming out of a destabilising crisis, we are living in exciting but complicated times … We are all a little bit at a loss for direction. I think the Louvre has a lot to say to young people, too, who will be at the centre of my concerns as president of the Louvre.”

Adding in an interview with the radio station France Inter that “the Louvre is the heart of Paris,” Des Cars said that she hopes to build a museum of the present and focusing on attracting younger generations will be central to her work.

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