Visitors to the Louvre Museum in Paris on Monday found themselves unable to enter due to a surprise work stoppage staged by staff.
The museum was forced to close for more than four hours, before eventually opening at 2:30pm local time. The unplanned strike was announced after a routine union meeting that morning in which workers discussed issues including workplace conditions and overcrowding at the museum.
The strike went ahead without a vote by the membership of the C.G.T-Culture union, which includes Louvre staff. A spokesperson for the museum described their actions as a ‘social movement’ and not a strike. According to French law, a strike must be announced in advance. ‘What began as a scheduled monthly information session turned into a mass expression of exasperation,’ a union representative told AP News.
Another union spokesperson stated that 200 jobs had been lost at the Louvre over the last fifteen years. They pointed to unmanageable visitor numbers (since 2023 daily attendance has been capped at 30,000 people, down from the previous average of 45,000), the deteriorating conditions of the museum’s rooms, and staff being stretched in their duties to the point of exhaustion.
These issues were echoed in a leaked letter from the museum’s director Laurence des Cars to France’s minister of culture Rachida Dati this January, in which overcrowding, the deteriorating condition of the buildings and financial issues were raised. Cars described the typical visitor experience as a ‘physical ordeal’.
A few days after the letter’s publication, it was announced by French president Emmanuel Macron that Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa would be moved to its own exhibition space within the museum’s courtyard and require a separate ticket in order to ease overcrowding. A new entrance for the museum would also be built. It is estimated that the project will cost around €400 million, financed in part by donations from the Louvre Abu Dhabi, and is planned to be completed by 2031.
