The Louvre's New Director Is Inheriting A Troubled, Traumatised Museum-Can He Repair The Damage? The Art Newspaper International Art News And Events

(MENAFN- USA Art News) New Louvre Director Christophe Leribault Arrives With a Mandate for“Appeasement”

When Christophe Leribault walked into the Musée du Louvre as its new director on February 25, he inherited more than the world's most visited museum. He stepped into an institution still reeling from the theft of the crown jewels last October, and from the cascading crises and political scrutiny that followed.

President Emmanuel Macron has framed Leribault's task in a single word:“appeasement.” The appointment lands amid a broader reshuffle in French cultural leadership. On the same day Leribault began, Macron named Catherine Pégard, a close collaborator, as culture minister after Rachida Dati resigned to run in the March election for Paris mayor. The contrast, in Paris, is part of the message: Pégard, 71, is known for discretion and caution, while Leribault, 62, is widely regarded as a low-key art historian rather than a political operator.

Leribault replaces Laurence des Cars, whose tenure has been criticized for a management style described by union representative Elise Muller as“top down, haughty and brittle.” Des Cars's departure followed months of intensifying pressure after the heist, including parliamentary hearings and a series of sharply worded reports that catalogued security and governance failures.

France's state auditing body, the Cour des Comptes, concluded that the Louvre had“accumulated considerable delays in the deployment of its security equipment,” favoring what it called an“event-driven policy.” Des Cars disputed the assessment as“unfair,” but the auditors' findings were stark: less than 0.3% of the museum's budget was dedicated to security and fire prevention. Strategic documents prepared before the burglary had also concluded that theft no longer posed a threat to the museum.

“The robbery was made possible because of these inadequacies,” Pierre Moscovici, the president of the Cour des Comptes, said.

Parliamentary hearings further found that when Des Cars arrived in 2021, she dropped safety plans initiated by her predecessor and instead prioritized a major project: a new entrance for the museum, a vision Macron publicly endorsed.

The security critique was only one part of a broader indictment of institutional management. In the months surrounding the heist, the Louvre faced floods, structural beam damage, and revelations of massive ticket fraud. Des Cars also oversaw a 40% rise in ticket prices for non-European tourists. The Cour des Comptes reported that she doubled the payroll of the management and spent €500,000 to create a private dining room.

By mid-December, staff began regular strikes in what was described as an unprecedented protest movement. Alexis Corbière, rapporteur for a parliamentary investigation committee, denounced a“hyper presidency,” arguing that the director was making decisions alone. Another committee member, Alexandre Poitier, delivered a blunt assessment:“In any other country, or establishment, this list of failures would have long since led to the departure of the director.”

Des Cars, who rarely gives interviews, did not respond to a request for comment and has not appeared at two parliamentary hearings since leaving her post.

Against that backdrop, Leribault's profile reads like a deliberate pivot toward scholarship and internal consensus-building. Trained at the Sorbonne, the École du Louvre, and the Medici Villa in Rome, he wrote theses on the interiors of Parisian mansions between 1770 and 1830 and on French rococo painter Jean-François de Troy (1679–1752).

His career has been anchored in Paris museums, with brief periods abroad at the Getty in Los Angeles and the Wallace Collection in London. He spent 16 years at the Musée Carnavalet, devoted to the history of Paris, then joined the Louvre's graphic department for six years while also overseeing the Musée National Eugène-Delacroix, housed in the artist's former workshop.

In 2012, Leribault became director of the Petit Palais's fine arts museum in Paris, where he developed a reputation for staging ambitious exhibitions of lesser-known or overlooked artists, often with bold scenography that contrasted with the Louvre's more traditional presentation.

Whether that combination of connoisseurship and administrative experience can stabilize the Louvre is now the central question. The museum's challenges are not only reputational but structural: rebuilding staff trust after months of strikes, responding to auditors and lawmakers, and demonstrating that security is no longer treated as an afterthought. For Leribault,“appeasement” will be measured less by tone than by the speed and seriousness of reform.

MENAFN03042026005694012507ID1110940444