to nine in the morning, the time when visitors are supposed to begin entering its galleries. The workers have decided in an assembly to maintain the strike this Wednesday. The closure already left tourists on the streets this Monday. The organizing unions have not even been able to meet with the director of the Laurence des Cars art gallery. Despite the refusal of the employees, the museum decided after 11:30 to partially open its doors, keeping some rooms closed.
On Tuesday the museum was closed for weekly rest. But this Wednesday, visitors were convinced that it would end up opening and since eight o’clock they had formed an endless queue around the glass pyramid through which you access the art gallery. Outside, a sign – the same one as on Monday – told the many visitors of a delay in the opening of the museum. “We know there are problems, but I don’t think the Louvre is going to close three days in a row. It would be something unusual, so we will wait because we already have the tickets and we are only in Paris for two days,” explains Torsten, a Berliner accompanied by his entire family.
The assembly, made up of about 300 employees, voted unanimously to continue the strike. However, after 11:30, the museum management announced that the doors would be opened, although only partially with some rooms closed. A measure, among other things, that seeks to alleviate the million-dollar losses of returning ticket money to visitors who cannot access the venue, as happened on Monday.
Valérie Baud, representative of the CFDT union, warned an hour earlier against reopening the museum under these conditions, almost two months after the spectacular theft of eight Crown jewels: “It should not happen that the management of the Louvre endangers the security of the establishment,” she warned. “The strike notice has been maintained and the strike was voted unanimously,” he insisted. “The proposals of the Ministry of Culture were considered insufficient and unacceptable by the staff,” the CGT commented on its Instagram account.
increasing rates for non-European visitors. A crisis meeting was held on Monday with the unions at the Ministry of Culture, on the front line in this matter, to respond to the workers’ indignation, also fueled by the succession of setbacks since the theft (closing of a gallery, old works damaged by a water leak…).
The chain of negligence that allowed the theft reaches the previous one, which was the subject of two alarming security audits during his mandate (2013-2021). This Tuesday, in the Senate commission investigating the issue, he rejected having neglected “prevention against theft” within the museum. “Contrary to what I have read, the culture of prevention against theft had not disappeared,” he declared during his first appearance before the Senate’s cultural affairs committee.
Until now, this senior official had been largely left out of the controversy that has engulfed his successor, Laurence des Cars, since the October 19 robbery, which exposed the museum’s lack of security equipment. However, it was during his presidency that two security audits were carried out in 2017 and 2019, one of which pointed out precisely the “vulnerability” of the balcony used by thieves in October.
This Wednesday it will be the turn of the current director, Laurence des Cars, who will return to the Senate to expand her explanations.
