[Artists News] The Mona Lisa Will Get Her Own Room at the Louvre, Vows Emmanuel Macron

[King Cobra]

CThe French president has announced a sweeping restoration of the Louvre.

 

 

France's President Emmanuel Macron gives a speech in front of the Mona Lisa by Italian artist Leonardo Da Vinci at the Louvre Museum in Paris on January 28, 2025. Photo: Bertrand Guay/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
by 
Eileen Kinsella
January 28, 2025
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Just a few days after French newspaper Le Parisien leaked a memo in which Louvre director Laurence des Cars expressed extreme concern for and dissatisfaction with the museum’s dilapidated state and increasing inability to adequately support the millions of visitors it draws each year, French President Emmanuel Macron delivered some major news.

Standing in front of the iconic Mona Lisa painting by Leonardo da Vinci—the crown jewel of the museum’s collection—Macron announced a major renovation estimated to be worth upwards of €700 million ($730 million) as well as a new, custom-built room to exclusively display the Mona Lisa.

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The Louvre did not immediately respond to a request from Artnet News but according to Le Parisien, only a fraction of the total estimated cost will be financed by the state. A new entrance and a number of new interior spaces are estimated to cost around €400 million ($417 million) and will be financed by money supplied by Louvre Abu Dhabi as well as calls for patronage.

Further, the work, aimed at shoring up the museum’s deteriorated state and bolstering infrastructure to handle the growing number of visitors each year, is estimated to cost upwards of €400 million. It will be financed in part by an increase in ticket admission charged to non-European Union visitors.

Macron also said that following the renovations, the Louvre will aim to attract 12 million visitors per year as compared with the current attendance of 9 million, a projected increase of 33 percent.

 

 

Visitors queue in front of Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece Mona Lisa. Photo: Eric Feferberg/AFP via Getty Images.

The creation of new rooms under the Cour Carrée, one of the museum’s main courtyards, will allow the Mona Lisa to be installed in a dedicated space that will be “accessible independently from the rest of the museum.” It will require a special access ticket, Macron said.

Among the complaints that director des Cars listed in the memo are “worrying temperature variations that endanger the conservation of the artworks” and parts of the building that are “very degraded” and “no longer watertight.”

Will Macron’s ambitious new plans silence critics? Yesterday, Italian official Francesca Caruso, who is the regional assessor for culture of the Lombardy region of the country, called for the Mona Lisa, or La Gioconda, as it’s known in Italian, to be returned to Italy, in a social media post. “We are ready to welcome her,” Caruso wrote.

According to the New York Times, the country’s culture ministry will hold an international competition this year to select an architect. The new entrance is expected to be finished by 2031, said Macron. He concluded his speech by saying: “Long live the Louvre’s new renaissance!”

 

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/emmanuel-macron-louvre-renovation-mona-lisa-2602990