Laurence des Vehicles, director of the Louvre Museum, is photographed earlier than a listening to of the Senate tradition committee, three days after jewels had been stolen in a daring daylight heist, in Paris, Oct. 22, 2025.
Emma Da Silva/AP
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Emma Da Silva/AP
PARIS — The Louvre Museum’s director resigned Tuesday after months of stress following the October theft of the French crown jewels, because the world’s most visited museum confronted widening scrutiny over safety failures, labor unrest and a suspected ticket fraud scheme.
Laurence des Vehicles stop after a punishing 12 months for the previous royal palace — the high-profile jewels heist from the Apollo Gallery, a mid-February burst pipe close to the “Mona Lisa,” water leaks damaging priceless books, employees walkouts and a wildcat strike over overcrowding and understaffing.
The landmark has confronted a widening narrative of an establishment spiraling uncontrolled.
And that stress deepened in latest weeks when French authorities revealed a suspected decadelong ticket fraud operation linked to the museum that investigators say could have value the Louvre 10 million euros ($11.8 million).
President Emmanuel Macron accepted des Vehicles’ resignation as “an act of duty” at a second when the Louvre wants “calm” and new momentum for safety upgrades, modernization and different main tasks, in accordance with an announcement from his workplace.
Macron needs to provide des Vehicles a brand new mission throughout France’s presidency of the Group of Seven main industrialized nations, centered on cooperation amongst main museums, the assertion stated.
For a lot of in France’s cultural world, the resignation solutions months of head-scratching over why no high official had fallen after the heist: a daylight theft that many within the nation noticed as probably the most humiliating breach of French heritage safety in residing reminiscence.
It additionally got here as lawmakers and cultural officers widened scrutiny of the museum’s management and safety practices within the months because the breach.
Folks line up exterior the Louvre Museum, in Paris, Feb. 13.
Michel Euler/AP
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Michel Euler/AP
Brazen theft
Thieves took lower than eight minutes in October to steal crown jewels valued at 88 million euros ($102 million) from the Louvre, in a weekend operation that surprised guests, uncovered obtrusive vulnerabilities and left one among France’s most symbolically charged collections in prison palms.
A number of suspects had been later arrested, however the stolen items stay lacking.
Des Vehicles, one of the outstanding museum administrators in Europe, had provided to resign on the day of the theft, but it surely was initially refused by the tradition minister.
In remarks after the theft, she described the second as a “tragic, brutal, violent actuality” for the Louvre and stated that, because the individual in cost, it had felt proper to supply her resignation.
Lightning rod
In an interview revealed on Tuesday by day by day newspaper Le Figaro, des Vehicles stated that she had tried to steer the Louvre by means of the fallout from the heist, however had concluded that she might not perform the museum’s transformation within the present institutional local weather.
Staying on, she stated, would have meant managing the established order when the museum nonetheless wants deep reform.
“I used to be there to take the lightning” as museum director, she stated.
Des Vehicles additionally stated that the October break-in uncovered issues that she had been warning about since taking workplace, together with growing older infrastructure, out of date technical methods and extreme congestion.
She had led the Louvre since 2021, taking up one of many museum world’s most prestigious jobs because the establishment emerged from the coronavirus pandemic and mass tourism returned.
Multifaceted disaster
In June, a wildcat strike by front-of-house employees and safety staff compelled the Louvre to halt operations, stranding hundreds of holiday makers exterior the glass pyramid and underscoring the depth of anger amongst staff over overcrowding, understaffing and what unions referred to as untenable working circumstances.
Employees stated that the stress of day by day customer flows — significantly across the “Mona Lisa” — had turn into unmanageable and that promised reforms had been arriving too slowly. There have been rising complaints that the infrastructure and staffing of the crumbling medieval construction have not saved tempo with the crowds pouring by means of its galleries.
The resignation got here at an particularly punishing second, lower than two weeks after French authorities revealed the separate ticket fraud scheme.
That case widened scrutiny past the jewels theft and towards the museum’s day-to-day controls.
Fraud scheme
Prosecutors say tour guides are suspected of — as much as 20 instances a day — reusing the identical tickets to herald completely different customer teams, at instances allegedly with the assistance of Louvre staff, in a system investigators consider operated for a decade.
In a uncommon interview simply days in the past with The Related Press after the fraud case was made public, the Louvre’s No. 2, basic administrator Kim Pham, stated that fraud at an establishment the dimensions of the Louvre was “statistically inevitable.”
He argued that the museum’s sheer scale — hundreds of thousands of holiday makers, a number of checkpoints and a sprawling historic complicated — makes it uniquely uncovered.
However he additionally acknowledged shortcomings, and stated that the museum had tightened validation checks and elevated controls.
New Renaissance
The succession of crises has put new political weight on a challenge Macron has closely championed: the Louvre’s sweeping overhaul plan, branded the “Louvre New Renaissance.”
Unveiled by Macron in January 2025, the renovation, which might take as much as a many years, goals to modernize a museum broadly seen as overstretched and bodily worn down by mass tourism.
The plan features a new entrance close to the Seine River to ease stress on I.M. Pei’s pyramid, new underground areas and a devoted room for the “Mona Lisa” with timed entry — all meant to enhance crowd circulate and scale back the day by day crush that has turn into an emblem of the Louvre’s success and its dysfunction.
The challenge is predicted to value roughly 700 million-800 million euros ($826 million-$944 million), with funding from ticket income, state help, donations and Louvre Abu Dhabi-related earnings.
The size and value of that plan now loom over the seek for des Vehicles’ successor.
Macron has framed the overhaul as a nationwide precedence, evaluating its ambition to different landmark French restoration efforts and casting it as a part of a broader protection of French cultural status.
