Director

Institutional context

The Musée du Louvre is the largest and most-visited art museum in the world, established as a public museum on 10 August 1793 in the former royal palace. The President-Director of the Louvre (the formal title) is the senior officer of the institution. From 1793 through 2021, every Director was male — a span of 228 years. The Louvre is the longest-running senior art-institutional position recorded in the dataset prior to its first-woman event.

Career path

Des Cars studied art history at the École du Louvre and at Paris-Sorbonne University. She held curatorial roles at the Musée d'Orsay and was Director of the Musée de l'Orangerie. She served as Director of the Musée d'Orsay and the Musée de l'Orangerie from February 2017 to 2021 — the first woman in that role.

Appointment

President Emmanuel Macron announced her appointment to lead the Louvre on 26 May 2021 in a Council of Ministers communication. She took up the position on 1 September 2021, succeeding Jean-Luc Martinez.

Tenure

Active. Tenure has included the Louvre's response to the post-pandemic visitor decline and recovery, security responses to incidents involving works in the collection, and the announcement of the major "Nouvelle Renaissance" renovation programme of 2025.

Cluster context

Des Cars's 2021 appointment is the centrepiece of the dataset's art-institutional cluster. Together with Kaywin Feldman at the National Gallery of Art (2019), Frances Morris at Tate Modern (2016), and Cecily Alemani as Venice Biennale artistic director (2022), the period 2016–2022 saw simultaneous first-woman appointments to the largest art institutions in their respective national contexts. The Louvre's 228-year male-only history makes its first-woman event the longest-baseline-to-first-event in the dataset.

Sources

• Musée du Louvre — Direction et histoire
• Ministère de la Culture — Communiqués de presse