The Mona Lisa is on the move and staff at the Louvre are not happy
The
Mona Lisa
is bound for a new part of the Louvre, which if she were alive she would presumably be very happy about, even if no one would be able to tell for sure.
Her eyes have been following people around the room for so long that no one has stopped to think it could be the walls she's looking at with that hint of disgust. Maybe she's long fancied a change of scene.
Unveiled
by Emmanuel Macron, the French president, earlier this year, the plan to give her a room of her own at the Paris museum seems wise on paper, though
I fear
the comings and goings will seed the kind of confusion that makes perfect heist-plot material and risks bringing Danny Ocean and his crew out of retirement for one last job.
As for that hint of disgust, researchers from the University of Amsterdam
used emotion-recognition software
in 2005 to quantify that the expression of the Mona Lisa, aka the Florentine noblewoman Lisa del Giocondo, nee Gherardini, is 9 per cent disgusted, 6 per cent fearful, 2 per cent angry, less than 1 per cent neutral and 83 per cent happy.
READ MORE
[
Potential new names for the Department of Arts: Smacc, Cacs, Scam and – my favourite – DoSac
Opens in new window
]
I don't have a precise breakdown of how staff at the Louvre feel, but this week's abrupt work stoppage suggests they are not quite 83 per cent happy and are somewhat more than 2 per cent angry. The museum failed to open for several hours on Monday morning because a scheduled staff meeting turned into what one union representative called 'a mass expression of exasperation'.
The source of this exasperation isn't complicated. The Louvre is overcrowded, understaffed and crumbling, and workers aren't the only ones to have noticed. Visiting it has become 'a physical ordeal', with 'no space to take a break' and 'insufficient' toilet and catering facilities, its director, Laurence des Cars,
warned
in a memo to France's culture minister, Rachida Dati, in January.
Even its architecture is conspiring against it. The glass-and-steel pyramid entrance, completed in 1989, creates a 'very inhospitable' greenhouse effect on hot days, while some areas suffer temperature variations that endanger the preservation of the artworks. And parts of the building are 'no longer watertight'.
Soon after Le Parisien newspaper published this leaked memo about the leaky Louvre, Macron sprang into announcement mode, emptying the Salle des États – the room where the Mona Lisa currently resides – to reveal a renovation and expansion project dubbed its Nouvelle Renaissance.
[
You might think it's Your Friends & Neighbors, but And Just Like That... is the only true aspirational show on TV
Opens in new window
]
The €800 million vision includes the addition of underground rooms, the construction of a new entrance near the river Seine and the relocation of
Leonardo da Vinci
's masterpiece to a dedicated room accessible via an add-on to the main ticket.
I saw the Mona Lisa in January 2005. A few months later it was moved to a different spot and placed in a sealed enclosure made of bulletproof glass. This was unconnected to my visit.
What I remember about that trip to the Louvre is that Paris was freezing, so my expression by the time we reached the painting was likely 83 per cent relief just to be indoors. Another 10 per cent was probably fatigue from contemplating what felt like the majority of the Louvre's 33,000 less-famous artworks along the way, and 7 per cent was weirdly prescient regret that proper smartphones hadn't been invented yet. The great thing about the Mona Lisa is that it's small enough for a selfie. I'm confident I could have fitted my big Irish head and the whole portrait into one frame.
I'm not now in the habit of taking selfies beside paintings, but a significant number of the near nine million people who visit the Louvre each year like to try. It doesn't necessarily lessen their appreciation of 16th-century art. They might not have had any to start with. And if you're paying €22 in, or €30 from 2026 if you're a non-EU visitor, it is perhaps not entirely daft to want a record of your 'ordeal'.
As for those who snap only the painting, they may have concluded that the Mona Lisa's smile is enigmatic mainly because she is so tiny and far away. If they use their phones' zoom function, they can get a closer look.
So don't blame the customers, blame the infrastructure, and adjust your expectations accordingly, because unless the Louvre's daily visitor cap is tightened, congestion and frustration seem inevitable for a while yet: the glaring flaw in Macron's ambitious plan for a roomier museum is that it will take up to 10 years to complete.
My advice for anyone keen to absorb some Leonardo genius in the meantime is to choose Milan. Book well in advance and
see The Last Supper instead
. It beats the elbow-sharpening and neck-craning required to glimpse the Mona Lisa through a sea of screens – or, if you're my height, a selection of armpits that elicit at least 9 per cent disgust.
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- Irish Times
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Irish Times
4 hours ago
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In August 2022, after two years of pandemic shutdowns, the arts sector in Ireland was on its knees. It hadn't been doing too well before Covid-19 , but in the face of a global virus, it all but evaporated. Government restrictions forced cinemas, theatres, performance venues, galleries and any arts-related spaces to shut down. Tens of thousands of people lost their jobs , myself included. In an already struggling sector, it was the death knell for the careers of many artists and arts workers. After tireless work by the National Campaign for the Arts and Theatre Forum, former minister for arts Catherine Martin announced the introduction of a Basic Income for the Arts (BIA) scheme. This was to be a three-year research project, funded by the EU, funnelled through the Irish government. It would cost between €150,000-€200,000. Out of 8,000 eligible applicants, 2,000 were selected in an anonymised and randomised process. I was one of those 2,000 people. 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After decades of failures, successes, more failures, rejections, heartaches, near misses and almost- theres, I was staring down the barrel of a good year. No, a great year. Following a critically acclaimed, sold-out run in 2019, a play I'd written, This Beautiful Village, was going back into the Abbey Theatre for production on the main stage for one month. After that, there would be a national tour. I got a publishing deal, I signed with a new agent at a big agency in London, and This Beautiful Village won Best New Play at the Irish Theatre Awards . This glorious moment had been a long time coming for me. And then, in a heartbeat, it all disappeared … poof … into thin air. READ MORE At the time, people were at pains to assure me that my show would come back once restrictions were lifted, that all would be righted. None of these people worked in the arts or entertainment. They did not understand that in this business, when you lose your slot, it's gone. 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It bought me time and space to process total career loss, chronic illness and allowed me to wedge the door open to keep writing, in whatever way I could. Every six months, there was a survey. It asked questions about my life demographics, things you would expect to answer: age, living situation, employment status, a lot of standard queries about where I was at. What I did not expect were the questions about my mental health and wellbeing. In a gentle, respectful way, it made me reflect on how I was really doing. There were the questions about care and household responsibilities. My answers to those blew my mind. It was galling to realise how much time I was spending on running a household and it was news to me to discover that with the hours I was putting in, I was, in fact, a stay-at-home mother. The purpose of the survey was to gather information, but what it did was wake me up to the domestic inequity in my household, and take a good hard look at how I was spending my time. 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Someone, an artist, had to sit down at a desk, likely for years, and grind that sucker out. For a pittance. The music you love to listen to started in an artist's head and made its way out on to an instrument. That instrument costs money. The recording equipment and studio space cost more. Like it or not, art needs money, because the people who make it are human beings who need the same things as you: shelter, food and water, yes. But they also need to be valued enough to invest in. [ The Irish Times view on basic income for artists: keep it going Opens in new window ] The Basic Income for the Arts scheme was due to end in August but it has been extended until February 2026. Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport, Patrick O'Donovan TD, plans to bring proposals for a 'successor scheme' to Cabinet as part of Budget 2026. Economically, the return on a BIA scheme will pay huge dividends in the form of more art, which will grow the tourism industry which will grow the hospitality, service, and retail industries. As an investment, it's a no brainer. And those are pretty thin on the ground these days. Lisa Tierney-Keogh is a playwright and writer
Irish Times
4 hours ago
- Irish Times
The Mona Lisa is on the move and staff at the Louvre are not happy
The Mona Lisa is bound for a new part of the Louvre, which if she were alive she would presumably be very happy about, even if no one would be able to tell for sure. Her eyes have been following people around the room for so long that no one has stopped to think it could be the walls she's looking at with that hint of disgust. Maybe she's long fancied a change of scene. Unveiled by Emmanuel Macron, the French president, earlier this year, the plan to give her a room of her own at the Paris museum seems wise on paper, though I fear the comings and goings will seed the kind of confusion that makes perfect heist-plot material and risks bringing Danny Ocean and his crew out of retirement for one last job. As for that hint of disgust, researchers from the University of Amsterdam used emotion-recognition software in 2005 to quantify that the expression of the Mona Lisa, aka the Florentine noblewoman Lisa del Giocondo, nee Gherardini, is 9 per cent disgusted, 6 per cent fearful, 2 per cent angry, less than 1 per cent neutral and 83 per cent happy. READ MORE [ Potential new names for the Department of Arts: Smacc, Cacs, Scam and – my favourite – DoSac Opens in new window ] I don't have a precise breakdown of how staff at the Louvre feel, but this week's abrupt work stoppage suggests they are not quite 83 per cent happy and are somewhat more than 2 per cent angry. The museum failed to open for several hours on Monday morning because a scheduled staff meeting turned into what one union representative called 'a mass expression of exasperation'. The source of this exasperation isn't complicated. The Louvre is overcrowded, understaffed and crumbling, and workers aren't the only ones to have noticed. Visiting it has become 'a physical ordeal', with 'no space to take a break' and 'insufficient' toilet and catering facilities, its director, Laurence des Cars, warned in a memo to France's culture minister, Rachida Dati, in January. Even its architecture is conspiring against it. The glass-and-steel pyramid entrance, completed in 1989, creates a 'very inhospitable' greenhouse effect on hot days, while some areas suffer temperature variations that endanger the preservation of the artworks. And parts of the building are 'no longer watertight'. Soon after Le Parisien newspaper published this leaked memo about the leaky Louvre, Macron sprang into announcement mode, emptying the Salle des États – the room where the Mona Lisa currently resides – to reveal a renovation and expansion project dubbed its Nouvelle Renaissance. [ You might think it's Your Friends & Neighbors, but And Just Like That... is the only true aspirational show on TV Opens in new window ] The €800 million vision includes the addition of underground rooms, the construction of a new entrance near the river Seine and the relocation of Leonardo da Vinci 's masterpiece to a dedicated room accessible via an add-on to the main ticket. I saw the Mona Lisa in January 2005. A few months later it was moved to a different spot and placed in a sealed enclosure made of bulletproof glass. This was unconnected to my visit. What I remember about that trip to the Louvre is that Paris was freezing, so my expression by the time we reached the painting was likely 83 per cent relief just to be indoors. Another 10 per cent was probably fatigue from contemplating what felt like the majority of the Louvre's 33,000 less-famous artworks along the way, and 7 per cent was weirdly prescient regret that proper smartphones hadn't been invented yet. The great thing about the Mona Lisa is that it's small enough for a selfie. I'm confident I could have fitted my big Irish head and the whole portrait into one frame. I'm not now in the habit of taking selfies beside paintings, but a significant number of the near nine million people who visit the Louvre each year like to try. It doesn't necessarily lessen their appreciation of 16th-century art. They might not have had any to start with. And if you're paying €22 in, or €30 from 2026 if you're a non-EU visitor, it is perhaps not entirely daft to want a record of your 'ordeal'. As for those who snap only the painting, they may have concluded that the Mona Lisa's smile is enigmatic mainly because she is so tiny and far away. If they use their phones' zoom function, they can get a closer look. So don't blame the customers, blame the infrastructure, and adjust your expectations accordingly, because unless the Louvre's daily visitor cap is tightened, congestion and frustration seem inevitable for a while yet: the glaring flaw in Macron's ambitious plan for a roomier museum is that it will take up to 10 years to complete. My advice for anyone keen to absorb some Leonardo genius in the meantime is to choose Milan. Book well in advance and see The Last Supper instead . It beats the elbow-sharpening and neck-craning required to glimpse the Mona Lisa through a sea of screens – or, if you're my height, a selection of armpits that elicit at least 9 per cent disgust.
