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The director of the Louvre museum has stepped down, four months after a spectacular heist in which poor security protocols enabled the theft of precious 19th-century crown jewels.
President Emmanuel Macron accepted the resignation of Laurence des Cars on Tuesday. No successor was immediately named.
Macron had rejected des Cars’ offer to resign immediately after the smash-and-grab raid in October of €88mn in jewels that once belonged to French queens, sparking waves of criticism that she should have been held accountable for the failure.
The Élysée Palace said on Tuesday that Macron had saluted an “act of responsibility” by des Cars at a time when the world’s most-visited museums needed “a return to peace and new strong momentum to successfully carry out projects to secure and modernise”.
Seven suspects have been arrested for allegedly carrying out the theft but the jewels themselves have not been recovered.
The thieves entered the Louvre with ease by disguising themselves as workmen in high-visibility vests and using a furniture lift to reach a gallery containing the jewels. They then escaped minutes later on scooters.
The theft prompted considerable political fallout. A parliamentary committee is now investigating the incident.
“The Louvre theft was no accident,” said Alexandre Portier, the member of parliament who co-heads the inquiry, adding that the theft “reveals the museum’s systemic failings, which had been simmering for years”.
Before des Cars was named to head the Louvre, she ran the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. When she came in, she pledged to attract a broader audience to the monumental institution, later becoming a prodigious fundraiser.
Critics of des Cars say she had prioritised spending on acquiring artworks and planning for Macron’s blockbuster €800mn plan to renovate the Louvre by adding a new entrance and building a dedicated underground gallery for the Mona Lisa.
In a report published just after the burglary, the national auditor said the Louvre spent €105mn on acquiring new works from 2018 to 2024, while only allocating €3mn over that period to pay for security upgrades. A different audit had recommended security improvements with an estimated total cost of €83mn.
Full implementation of those security recommendations is now delayed until 2032.
Only 39 per cent of rooms across the museum are equipped with at least one security camera, the report said.
This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Laurence des Cars.