The Louvre, which multiplied its offer on the internet and social networks during the confinement, was acclaimed with 10.5 million visits, including a considerable part from the United States, the museum told AFP.
These visits over 71 days (March 12-May 22) are to be compared with the year 2019 for which the largest museum in the world had totaled 14.1 million visits. While the vagueness reigns over a reopening date, which they hope for in the summer, the museum teams are careful to offer numerous virtual resources every week in English, the first usual visitors to the museum being the Americans, before the Chinese .
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Attendance peaked especially during the first weeks of confinement with 330,000 visits on average. 90% of visitors were non-French speaking, against 77% currently. From March 12 to May 22, 16% of the visits were made from France ... compared to 17% from the United States.
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For Sophie Grange, Deputy Director of Communication at the Louvre, "the combination of the smartphone and social networks" consecrates the triumph of the virtual image and the major museums have no choice but to make the most of these media to make themselves known to a wider audience, at home. "We fight a little because the work of art is not an image and we have to walk around it, the work of art would require a real meeting," she admits.
The app offering a virtual reality experience, "Head to head with the Mona Lisa" (downloaded more than 10,500 times) and a new service for children (petitlouvre.louvre.fr), which brings together animated tales corresponding to works of the museum (76,000 visits) worked particularly well.
