Macron announces ‘new Renaissance’ for Louvre, and new home for Mona Lisa

On Tuesday the French president Emmanuel Macron announced plans for a ‘new renaissance’ at the Louvre. The speech came after a leaked letter from the Louvre’s president, Laurence Des Cars, to the culture minister, Rachida Dati, outlining museum’s problems with climate control, leaks in various galleries and the shortcomings of the I.M. Pei-designed glass pyramid. Giving his speech in front of the Mona Lisa, President Macron announced a new eastern entrance to alleviate overcrowding – and to accommodate an increase in visitor numbers to 12 million a year.  While the French president said that the Mona Lisa would be moved to a dedicated space requiring a separate admission ticket, Laurence Des Cars clarified on France Inter on 2 Feb that all tickets will allow access to the permanent collections and exhibitions, with a supplement allowing visitors to see the Mona Lisa. Ticket prices are to rise for visitors from outside the European Union in 2026 and an international architectural competition for the new entrance will be organised by the ministry of culture later this year.

The painter Jaune Quick-to-See Smith has died at the age of 85. Smith received increasing recognition for her own work in recent years – Target (1992), for instance, was the first painting by a Native American artist to be acquired by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in 2020, and the Whitney Museum of American Art held a retrospective called ‘Memory Map’ in 2023. She was also a great champion of other Indigenous artists and curated many exhibtions, from her student days (as part of the Grey Canyon collective) to a survey show at the NGA in 2024 called ‘The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans’. Smith, who was a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, also had French Cree and Shoshone ancestry. The abstract paintings and collages for which she is best known combine Native American traditions with influences from, among others, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, Paul Klee, Kandinsky and Picasso. In an interview with Apollo in 2023, she said, ‘‘I want them to leave thinking, “She’s an American artist” – not as something other.’

The Smithsonian Institution and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. have closed their diversity offices, reports the Art Newspaper. The move by the two federally funded institutions comes after the issuing of the executive order titled ‘Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing’, just one of the many executive orders signed by President Trump after taking office on 20 January. A spokesman for the NGA, which receives nearly 80 per cent of its operating budget from the federal government, told the New York Times that it had ‘closed its office of belonging and inclusion and removed related language from our website’ – replacing ‘diversity, equity, access and inclusion’ from the values listed on its website with the words ‘welcoming and accessible’. The Smithsonian Institution, which gets 53 per cent of its funding from the federal government, has also put a hiring freeze in place and required all employees to return to the office full-time, reports the Washington Post. In an email to staff, Lonnie G. Bunch III, Secretary of the Smithsonian, wrote: ‘Our core values of fairness and equity for all remain unchanged.’

After cancelling a scheme by the architect Herzog & de Meuron, the Vancouver Art Gallery has announced a new architectural competition for a more modest new home, reports the Art Newspaper. The costs of the original project had grown from Can$400m to Can$600m before the museum called it off in December. Anthony Kiendl, director of the Vancouver Art Gallery, told the Vancouver Sun that 13 Canadian firms have been invited to submit proposals for the ‘significantly smaller’ building project: ‘We’re designing to budget, not budgeting to design. We’re working within our means.’

After the dramatic break-in at the Drents Museum in Assen in the Netherlands, Dutch police have arrested three suspects, reports the Guardian. On Saturday 25, thieves used explosives to blow up a side door of the museum before making off with gold artefacts that included four important Dacian objects on loan from the National Museum of Romania. These included 2,500-year-old golden Helmet of Cotofenesti and three gold bracelets. The Dutch authorities have also named another suspect, who was seen buying a hammer at a DIY store in Assen. The artefacts have not yet been recovered.