{"id":2391,"date":"2025-06-21T12:57:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-21T12:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/2391\/"},"modified":"2025-06-21T12:57:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-21T12:57:11","slug":"the-mona-lisa-is-on-the-move-but-staff-at-the-louvre-are-frustrated-by-the-wait-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/2391\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mona Lisa is on the move but staff at the Louvre are frustrated by the wait \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Mona Lisa<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s looking at with that hint of disgust. Maybe she\u2019s long fancied a change of scene.<\/p>\n

Unveiled<\/a> 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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

As for that hint of disgust, researchers from the University of Amsterdam used emotion-recognition software<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Potential new names for the Department of Arts: Smacc, Cacs, Scam and \u2013 my favourite \u2013 DoSacOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have a precise breakdown of how staff at the Louvre feel, but this week\u2019s 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 \u201ca mass expression of exasperation\u201d.<\/p>\n

The source of this exasperation isn\u2019t complicated. The Louvre is overcrowded, understaffed and crumbling, and workers aren\u2019t the only ones to have noticed. Visiting it has become \u201ca physical ordeal\u201d, with \u201cno space to take a break\u201d and \u201cinsufficient\u201d toilet and catering facilities, its director, Laurence des Cars, warned<\/a> in a memo to France\u2019s culture minister, Rachida Dati, in January.<\/p>\n

Even its architecture is conspiring against it. The glass-and-steel pyramid entrance, completed in 1989, creates a \u201cvery inhospitable\u201d greenhouse effect on hot days, while some areas suffer temperature variations that endanger the preservation of the artworks. And parts of the building are \u201cno longer watertight\u201d.<\/p>\n

Soon after Le Parisien newspaper published this leaked memo about the leaky Louvre, Macron sprang into announcement mode, emptying the Salle des \u00c9tats \u2013 the room where the Mona Lisa currently resides \u2013 to reveal a renovation and expansion project dubbed its Nouvelle Renaissance.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0You might think it\u2019s Your Friends & Neighbors, but And Just Like That… is the only true aspirational show on TVOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The \u20ac800 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<\/a>\u2019s masterpiece to a dedicated room accessible via an add-on to the main ticket.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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\u2019s 33,000 less-famous artworks along the way, and 7 per cent was weirdly prescient regret that proper smartphones hadn\u2019t been invented yet. The great thing about the Mona Lisa is that it\u2019s small enough for a selfie. I\u2019m confident I could have fitted my big Irish head and the whole portrait into one frame.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m 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\u2019t necessarily lessen their appreciation of 16th-century art. They might not have had any to start with. And if you\u2019re paying \u20ac22 in, or \u20ac30 from 2026 if you\u2019re a non-EU visitor, it is perhaps not entirely daft to want a record of your \u201cordeal\u201d.<\/p>\n

As for those who snap only the painting, they may have concluded that the Mona Lisa\u2019s smile is enigmatic mainly because she is so tiny and far away. If they use their phones\u2019 zoom function, they can get a closer look.<\/p>\n

So don\u2019t blame the customers, blame the infrastructure, and adjust your expectations accordingly, because unless the Louvre\u2019s daily visitor cap is tightened, congestion and frustration seem inevitable for a while yet: the glaring flaw in Macron\u2019s ambitious plan for a roomier museum is that it will take up to 10 years to complete.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>. It beats the elbow-sharpening and neck-craning required to glimpse the Mona Lisa through a sea of screens \u2013 or, if you\u2019re my height, a selection of armpits that elicit at least 9 per cent disgust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Mona Lisa is bound for a new part of the Louvre, which if she were alive she…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[648,1032,1033,171,3274,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-2391","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-design","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-the-louvre","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114721472174275977","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}