Even in gentle of the string of issues which have beset the Louvre since October, final week stands out as a very unhealthy one for the museum.
On Friday (13 February), the Paris prosecution workplace revealed it was investigating an alleged €10m, decade-long ticket fraud scheme on the Parisian museum. The identical day, a water leak broken a Nineteenth-century canvas on the ceiling of the Italian work’ gallery. At the moment (16 February) noticed one other workers stroll out, in protest in opposition to “worsening” safety and dealing situations—with most galleries closed this afternoon. It continues what has already change into the longest interval of strikes within the museum’s historical past.
9 individuals have been arrested on Tuesday (10 February) over an alleged scheme involving reused and counterfeit tickets, based on the day by day newspaper Le Parisien. These detained reportedly included tour guides and two museum staff.
The prosecution workplace confirmed that these arrested have been charged with gang fraud, one in all them being positioned in pre-trial detention. Based on the workplace, guides concerned within the rip-off would use the identical tickets a number of instances to sneak guests in. Investigators imagine that members of the community could have introduced as much as 20 vacationer teams into the museum every day over the previous ten years utilizing reused tickets. The workplace has estimated loss to the Louvre at €10m.
French police say they’ve seized €957,000 in money and €486,000 from financial institution accounts. A part of the rip-off’s earnings was additionally reportedly reinvested in Dubai.
The prosecutors stated that the arrest adopted a grievance that the Louvre filed in December 2024. The museum has but to launch a press release, nevertheless in response to a request from The Artwork Newspaper, a Louvre spokesperson stated that the police operation is a part of an energetic plan to fight “intensifying and diversifying ticket fraud”.
The Louvre is essentially the most visited museum is the world—welcoming as much as 30,000 guests a day. Based on official figures, in 2023, the unlawful re-sale of free passes alone amounted to €4m. In 2024, stolen financial institution knowledge and pretend web sites induced the lack of one other €2m.
Issues over upkeep
On Friday, the museum additionally introduced {that a} leak from a central heating tube had broken a portray positioned in a ceiling of the Italian work gallery. There have been two rips present in The triumph of French portray (1822) by Charles Meynier, which depicts the French painters Nicolas Poussin Charles Le Brun and Eustache Le Sueur, and the ceiling’s paint layer had lifted. The museum says that different works displayed within the gallery, together with work by Fra Angelico and Bernardino Luini, have been secure and the room was reopened within the afternoon.
The leak provides to considerations in regards to the bodily state of the museum. Final November, the rupture of a corroded heating pipe induced a flood within the library of the Egyptian Division, damaging 400 paperwork. And the ten-room Greek ceramics gallery stays closed as a result of ceiling beams are at risk of collapsing.
For months, the unions have been protesting in opposition to what they are saying is the museum’s lack of consideration to “technical failures and the constructing’s ageing situation”. They’ve renewed their requires the Louvre to desert a grandiose €666m plan for a brand new entrance and a subterranean complicated across the Mona Lisa, with a purpose to “concentrate on fundamental upkeep and restoration”.
The museum has come underneath criticism for the proposed extension, with French media pointing to the actual fact that it was launched earlier than any technical examine had been undertaken, particularly on the dangers of flooding underneath the banks of the Seine.
On Wednesday 11 February, the collection of an architect for the proposed extension was indefinitely suspended by the Paris prefect. The museum stated it wanted as a substitute “to proceed with technical research”.
The postponement has additionally been linked by official sources to the approaching departure of tradition minister Rachida Dati, who’s a candidate in subsequent month’s Paris mayoral election—in addition to uncertainties relating to the way forward for the Louvre director Laurence des Vehicles.
Requires Des Vehicles’ resignation, together with from senators near Dati, have mounted within the wake of an unprecedented sequence of scandals on the museum and the theft of the French crown jewels final October.
