After Laurence des Cars resigned as director of the Louvre on 24 February, it has been announced that her successor will be Christophe Leribault, currently president of the Palace of Versailles. Des Cars’s announcement comes four months after the spectacular theft of French crown jewels from the museum. A series of strikes by disaffected staff and the poor condition of the building added to the pressures she was under and, on Monday, the interim report of a parliamentary inquiry asked why des Cars – who offered her resignation immediately after the theft but had it refused – was still in post. In an interview with Le Figaro on Tuesday, des Cars said that it was now impossible for her to advance the much-needed modernisation of the museum. As for the months of criticism, it had been her job, she said, to ‘act as a lightning conductor’. In its statement, the Élysée Palace described her resignation as ‘an act of responsibility in a moment when the greatest museum in the world required a return to calm and a new strong impetus’ to face the challenges ahead.
Christophe Leribault, who has been president of the Palace of Versailles for nearly two years, now adds running the most-visited museum in the world to his impressive CV. The 18th-century specialist will be making a return to the Louvre, where he was appointed deputy director of the graphic arts department in 2006, becoming director of the Louvre-affiliated Musée National Eugène-Delacroix a year later. In 2012 he was appointed director of the Petit Palais, which put on a series of imaginative and critically acclaimed exhibitions by artists ranging from the Neapolitan baroque painter Luca Giordano to the Impressionist James Tissot. This is the second time he takes over the running of a museum from des Cars, whom he succeeded as director of the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée de l’Orangerie in 2021, but on this occasion in much more challenging circumstances.
The director of the Petit Palais, Annick Lemoine, was also announced as the new director of the Musée d’Orsay yesterday. The post has been vacant since Sylvain Amic died suddenly in August 2025. Lemoine, an expert in Caravaggio and his followers, was previously director of the Musée Cognacq-Jay in Paris.
