Laurence de Carre was a young employee at the Musée d’Orsay in 1994 when she had the dream of bringing together the two great French painters, Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas, in one exhibition. Their most important works were distributed across different continents, and some of them were never loaned out; So no museum has discovered their rival friendship.
The “Manet/Degas” exhibition opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 24, after a 4-month tour at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, where it attracted 670,000 visitors.
De Carr says the museum is one of the rare French names recognized around the world (New York Times)
Credit goes to De Carr, who rose from being curator of the Orsay Museum to its president for 4 years before assuming the presidency of the Louvre Museum in 2021, and began arranging the Manet/Degas exhibition while she was still at the Orsay Museum. When Max Hollein became director of the Metropolitan Museum in 2018, De Carr convinced him to co-produce it with her, using works from both museums to achieve fairness.
Repairs at the Louvre
Today, de Carre faces a challenge from a different regime at the Louvre Museum, the largest museum in the world. The former palace, which was home to the kings of France until 1682, exudes grandeur and majesty, and is the soft power arm of the French state. However, it is also a 21st century museum with the need to be relevant and comprehensive, and to give its millions of visitors the broadest possible opportunity to visit it.
There is also the perennial matter of the Mona Lisa; Since its theft in 1911, the Renaissance masterpiece has been inundated with increasing numbers of visitors. Which made controlling these crowds coming to see it the biggest dilemma for any official who assumed the position of president of the Louvre Museum.
Workers remove the painting “Liberty Leading the People” by Delacroix (1798-1863) at the Louvre Museum in Paris (AFP)
“The Louvre is one of the rare French names that… “It is recognized all over the world.”
De Carr has pressing issues. She wants to create a second gate for the museum at the easternmost facade, which is a colonnade of columns dating back to the 17th century that leads to the Renaissance wing of the museum. Its goal is to relieve congestion around the Louvre Pyramid, the glass-steel entrance that was designed by architect I.M. Pei in the 1980s to receive 4.5 million visitors annually, but in 2018 hit a record 10.2 million visitors. The museum estimates that 80 percent of these visitors come just for the Mona Lisa, as they wait in line for their turn to take a selfie.
Crowd control is one of the biggest problems De Carr has to solve (New York Times)
The museum’s president wants to make the Louvre a more enjoyable experience, by allowing its patrons, especially the French, who currently make up only 30 percent of the total, to avoid passing through the crowded pyramid every time. She hopes that the second entry point will attract these visitors, who will visit more areas in the museum compared to those leading to the “Mona Lisa.” It also limited the number of daily visitors to 30,000 visitors, and their number before the pandemic had reached 45,000 visitors. “We must restore balance to the museum,” she said.
De Car wants to create a second gate for the museum on its eastern façade (New York Times)
For his part, Didier Cellet, who was the museum’s general director from 2000 to 2009, said: The fate of national museums in France is ultimately determined by the state, and in the case of the Louvre, by the country’s president, who personally met the candidates for the job that went to him. De Car.
De Carr says that balance must be restored to the Louvre Museum (New York Times)
In recent years, the Louvre has gained independence from the state by committing to generate nearly half of its annual budget of about 270 million euros ($288 million). However, Ms. de Carre’s master plan, which includes a modern entrance, a new foyer and exhibition space, needs the support of current President Emmanuel Macron, and whether this is achieved depends on his willingness and ability to put his mark on the Louvre in the way he has been doing. Former French President Francois Mitterrand when he commissioned the construction of the glass pyramid in the 1980s. It also depends on the strength of De Carre’s persuasion.
Her passion for historical art and her achievements
De Carre was born into an aristocratic family, the daughter of the historian Jean de Carre, a well-known media commentator in France, and the granddaughter of the novelist Guy de Carre. De Carr fell in love with her art-historical specialty, the 19th century, during a childhood trip to the castles of Ludwig II, King of Bavaria, in Germany. The Orsay Museum was a natural place for her. She has helped organize many notable exhibitions, including the landmark Gustave Courbet exhibition in 2007, and the bold tribute to the Marquis de Sade in 2014, the same year she took over as director of the Musée d’Orangerie, a sister institution of the Musée d’Orsay.
“The Louvre Pyramid” with a glass-steel entrance designed by architect I. M. Pei (New York Times)
What people remember most about de Carré at the Orsay Museum is the exhibition “Black Figures: From Géricault to Matisse,” which focuses on black figures in French art from the late 18th century to the modern era. It attracted half a million visitors, including visitors to the museum for the first time, and the programs accompanying the exhibition included performances by French rapper Abdel Malek, inspired by a painting dating back to 1850 in the exhibition: “A Little Black Boy Carrying a Sword” by the artist Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. De Carre’s previous mission was a departure from her preoccupation with the 19th century: she was scientific director of the French Museums Agency, which laid the foundation for the Louvre Abu Dhabi.
Her role was to supervise the team that organized loans from 13 partner museums, including the Louvre Museum, acquired works for the private collection at the Louvre Abu Dhabi Museum, and prepared exhibitions. This project was the result of an agreement worth one billion euros ($1.1 billion) over 30 years, of which the Louvre Museum is the main beneficiary, with Abu Dhabi paying 40 percent of this amount simply for the use of its name, and millions more to obtain the Louvre Museum’s collections and expertise. .
Tourists next to the Louvre Pyramid at the Louvre Museum in central Paris (AFP)
Today, the Louvre Abu Dhabi, housed in a domed building designed by architect Jean Nouvel, is one of the world’s major cultural destinations and is seen as a model of a more global, less Western-focused form of museum making. Part of this recognition must be attributed to De Carr.
The question now is whether it can add a comprehensive overhaul of the Louvre itself to its scorecard. The determination seemed clear, but De Carre said that being the first woman to head the museum created additional pressures. “You have to live up to expectations, and there are a lot of them,” she said.
* Service: “The New York Times”
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2023-10-03 04:51:27
