French President Emmanuel Macron announced Tuesday that the Mona Lisa will get its own dedicated room inside the Louvre museum, which he said will be renovated and expanded in a major overhaul that will take years to complete.
The renovation will include a new entrance near the River Seine, to be opened by 2031, and the creation of underground rooms, Macron said in a speech from the Louvre room where the Mona Lisa is displayed.
Macron did not disclose the cost, estimated to run into hundreds of millions of euros, to modernize the most visited museum in the world, plagued with overcrowding and outdated facilities.
The Louvre's latest overhaul dates back to the 1980s, when the iconic glass pyramid was unveiled. Now, the museum is not up to international standards anymore.
A look at what's at stake:
Water leaks and other damage
Louvre Director Laurence des Cars sent a note expressing a series of concerns to Culture Minister Rachida Dati earlier this month saying the museum is threatened by “obsolescence.”
According to the document first released by French newspaper Le Parisien, she warned about the gradual degradation of the building due to water leaks, temperature variations and other issues “endangering the preservation of artworks.”
The pyramid that serves at the museum's entrance, unveiled in 1989 as part of late President François Mitterrand’s project, now appears outdated. The place is not properly insulated from the cold and the heat and tends to amplify noise, making the space uncomfortable for both the public and the staff, des Cars stressed.
In addition, the museum suffers from a lack of food offerings and restroom facilities, she said.
A costly and complex overhaul
“We’re faced with a collective challenge,” an official at the French presidency said. “That is, how can we adapt the Louvre to expectations, welcome visitors from across the world in comfortable conditions and also be leading a commitment for artistic and cultural education?” The official could not be named in line with the French presidency’s customary practices.
The financing needed for such a major renovation has not been specified, but any renovation work at the former royal palace is expected to be costly and technically complicated.
The Pompidou Center, another major museum in Paris, is set to close to undergo a five-year renovation worth 262 million euro ($273 million), starting from the end of the year.
Half the Louvre's budget is financed by the French state, including the wages of the 2,200 employees.
The other half is provided by private funds including ticket sales, earnings from restaurants, shops and bookings for special events, as well as patrons and other partners. That includes the United Arab Emirates' financing for the right to use the brand for the Louvre Abu Dhabi museum.
May Mona Lisa have its own room?
Questions had arisen about how the Mona Lisa should be displayed in the museum.
Des Cars asked for the issue to be “reassessed,” suggesting a possible transfer of the museum's most popular attraction to another room that would be specifically dedicated to it. That's what Macron said will happen.
The Mona Lisa is now being shown behind protective glass in the museum's largest room, overcrowded with long, noisy queues of visitors eager to take a selfie with Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece. That makes some other paintings in the room by the greatest Venetian painters like Titian and Veronese go unnoticed by many.
The museum's latest big renovation in the 1980s was designed to receive 4 million annual visitors.
Last year, the Louvre received 8.7 million visitors, over three-quarters being foreigners mostly from the United States, China and neighboring countries Italy, the UK, Germany and Spain.
