January 7, 2010, in Paris. Nicolas Sarkozy, then President of the Republic, expresses a wish. "
Create at the Louvre a department devoted to the arts of Eastern Christianity, Byzantine and Slavic empires
". More than ten years later, this wish will be fulfilled. Laurence des Cars, next president of the Louvre museum, confirmed on France Inter Wednesday that she wanted to tackle the creation of this ninth department as soon as possible. “
Today, we do not read this extraordinary civilization which is lost, if I may say so, in several departments of the Louvre. Yet it is a magnificent collection that deserves a department in its own right,
”said Laurence des Cars.
The subject has long been on the table at the Louvre Museum.
As soon as Nicolas Sarkozy made his statement in 2010, Henri Loyrette, then patron of the museum, welcomed the idea with enthusiasm, while a department on the arts of Islam had just been finalized.
In the newspaper
La Croix
, Henri Loyrette defended the project, arguing that "
here too, we have remarkable collections, insufficiently highlighted
".
Read also: Laurence des Cars: the brilliant career of the first woman appointed to head the Louvre
Then, in 2013, Jean-Luc Martinez took over the head of the museum, and the project fell through. “
Together, with the Ministry of Culture, we decided that the creation of this department was not an emergency,”
he declared on a daily basis. “
The creation of a new department of the arts of Byzantium would have required reshuffling all the maps and reviewing the perimeters and fields of competence of the current heritage departments: department of paintings, works of art, sculptures, drawings, Mediterranean civilizations,
”he explained, triggering the wrath of some political figures. Abandoned, the project came back briefly in 2018, when the Arab World Institute launched its exhibition.
Christians of the East, two thousand years of history
, which attracts more than 155,000 visitors.
Without however giving any follow-up.
Till today.
The announcement of the institution's new president is part of her project to breathe new life into it.
“
There is a universal vocation of the Louvre.
And that's what interests me, it's this potential.
The Louvre can be fully contemporary because it can open up to today's world while telling us about the past, giving relevance to the present through the weight of the past.
We need this look at the long term.
», She assured the microphone of Léa Salamé.