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By Dana Thomas
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Henri Loyrette promised a new and improved Louvre when he took over as president and director of the august Paris museum four years ago and, step by step, he has delivered. Last week he unveiled the biggest transformation yet: a new viewing space for the "Mona Lisa," Leonardo Da Vinci's masterpiece and the most-visited artwork in the world. Alone on a south-facing partition in the center of the 19th-century Salle des Etats, protected by four centimeters of greenish bulletproof glass, Da Vinci's 16th-century portrait of Florentine lovely Lisa Gherardini smiles serenely. Sharing the gallery is the new installation of Veronese's mammoth "Marriage at Cana," which was restored in 1992, as well as a selection of Venetian Renaissance works by Titian, Tintoretto and Bassano.
More than 6 million people visit the Louvre each year--the most in the world. And 80 percent--some 20,000 a day--come to view the "Mona Lisa." Loyrette, former director of the Musee d'Orsay, inherited the project from longtime director Pierre Rosenberg, who retired from the Louvre in 2001. He modified Rosenberg's plans, changing the placement of the painting to allow for better pedestrian circulation, particularly among the surging crowds of Japanese tourists who come to pay homage daily. "The Japanese are crazy about her," says Loyrette. So crazy, in fact, that Japan's Nippon Television Network paid $6.2 million for the Salle des Etats restoration--and pledged another $2.2 million for the next big Louvre project: moving the Venus de Milo--another Japanese obsession--into a roomier renovated space in the Denon Wing in 2007.
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The acceptance of corporate funding for such projects has caused an uproar in France. Groups such as "Louvre Pour Tous" (Louvre for All) have been protesting in front of the museum's pyramid entrance. To this, Loyrette shrugs. "It's an old French attitude to think that funding by private sponsors is dirty money," he says. "People have always believed that it should come from the government."
Indeed, ridding the Louvre of government interference has been Loyrette's greatest crusade. In four years, he has managed to wrest control of the museum from the French state and now says it enjoys complete autonomy for the first time in its 216 years. This has allowed Loyrette to pursue other Louvre projects, such as the new department of Islamic art, budgeted at 50 million euro (half of that to be eventually underwritten by corporate sponsors) and a new $100 million satellite museum in the former coal-mining town of Lens, scheduled to open in 2009.
Loyrette has also launched several outreach programs, particularly to the United States. Approximately 1.2 million of the Louvre's visitors each year are American. "I say that the Louvre is the second American museum," after the Met, he says. Loyrette is currently developing relationships with smaller museums in cities such as Portland, Seattle, Miami and Cleveland, to host shows from the Louvre's collection. And in 2006, Atlanta's High Museum will welcome the new Lens collection for three years before it travels to its permanent home. And Loyrette is even encouraging the infiltration of pop culture in the museum's regal halls: this summer Hollywood director Ron Howard will film part of "The Da Vinci Code" in the gilded Grande Galerie, which leads to the "Mona Lisa." "Since its inception, [the Louvre] has been in flux, always evolving," says Loyrette. Under his tenure, that seems unlikely to change.
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