LOUVRE CONTEMPLATES MOVING MONA LISA TO UNDERGROUND CHAMBER
Officials at the Louvre in Paris are considering moving the Mona Lisa to a belowground room to “put an end to public disappointment,” as museum director Laurence des Cars told staff. “I place it at the heart of my mission as the director to better welcome the public. And it’s always frustrating when our visitor experience is not quite up to par—as is the case, obviously, with the Mona Lisa,” des Cars told national broadcaster France Inter in an April 26 interview. “So in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, we are thinking about making necessary improvements.”
The Louvre is the world’s most visited museum, attracting some nine million visitors annually. During the museum’s busy season, the iconic canvas by Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci draws more than 20,000 viewers a day. Currently placed in a large room hung with many other paintings, the $830 million work is behind bulletproof glass and is not easily apprehended, thanks to the crowds waiting to see it (though it was successfully splashed with soup by climate activists earlier this year). After queueing for hours, visitors are typically able to snag only a handful of seconds with the painting, and many use these to snap a selfie with its enigmatically smiling subject. The brevity of the experience, coupled with the endurance test leading up to it, has earned the work the sobriquet “the world’s most disappointing masterpiece,” according to a recent analysis of online reviews.
The museum’s new plan for the painting would see it situated in its own underground room, where visitors could access it directly, without passing through the museum’s glass pyramid entrance. A second adjacent room would be used for temporary exhibitions. If implemented, the project is estimated to cost €500 million ($535 million). Recent budget cuts announced by the government of president Emmanuel Macron are likely to affect the plan’s fate.
