Louvre Museum director resigns in the wake of October's brazen French
crown jewels heist
[February 25, 2026]
By THOMAS ADAMSON and JOHN LEICESTER
PARIS (AP) — The Louvre Museum's director resigned Tuesday after months
of pressure following the October theft of the French crown jewels, as
the world's most visited museum faced widening scrutiny over security
failures, labor unrest and a suspected ticket fraud scheme.
Laurence des Cars quit after a punishing year for the former royal
palace — the high-profile jewels heist from the Apollo Gallery, a
mid-February burst pipe near the “Mona Lisa,” water leaks damaging
priceless books, staff walkouts and a wildcat strike over overcrowding
and understaffing.
The landmark has faced a narrative of an institution spiraling out of
control.
And that pressure deepened in recent weeks when French authorities
revealed a suspected decadelong ticket fraud operation linked to the
museum that investigators say may have cost the Louvre 10 million euros
($11.8 million).
President Emmanuel Macron accepted des Cars’ resignation as “an act of
responsibility” at a moment when the Louvre needs “calm” and new
momentum for security upgrades, modernization and other major projects,
according to a statement from his office.
Macron wants to give des Cars a new mission during France’s presidency
of the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations, focused on
cooperation among major museums, the statement said.
For many in France’s cultural world, the resignation answers months of
head-scratching over why no top official had fallen after the heist: a
daylight robbery that many in the country saw as the most humiliating
breach of French heritage security in living memory.
It also came as lawmakers and cultural officials widened scrutiny of the
museum’s leadership and security practices in the months since the
breach.
Brazen theft
Thieves took less than eight minutes in October to steal crown jewels
valued at 88 million euros ($102 million) from the Louvre, in a weekend
operation that stunned visitors, exposed glaring vulnerabilities and
left one of France's most symbolically charged collections in criminal
hands.
Several suspects were later arrested, but the stolen pieces remain
missing.
Des Cars, one of the most prominent museum directors in Europe, had
offered to resign on the day of the robbery, but it was initially
refused by the culture minister.
In remarks after the theft, she described the moment as a “tragic,
brutal, violent reality” for the Louvre and said that, as the person in
charge, it had felt right to offer her resignation.
Lightning rod
In an interview published on Tuesday by daily newspaper Le Figaro, des
Cars said that she had tried to steer the Louvre through the fallout
from the heist, but had concluded that she could no longer carry out the
museum’s transformation in the current institutional climate.
Staying on, she said, would have meant managing the status quo when the
museum still needs deep reform.
“I was there to take the lightning” as museum director, she said.
Des Cars also said that the October break-in exposed problems that she
had been warning about since taking office, including aging
infrastructure, obsolete technical systems and severe congestion.
She had led the Louvre since 2021, taking over one of the museum world’s
most prestigious jobs as the institution emerged from the coronavirus
pandemic and mass tourism returned.
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Laurence des Cars, director of Le Louvre museum, poses before a
hearing at the Culture commission of the Senate, three days after
historic jewels were stolen in a daring daylight heist, Oct. 22,
2025 in Paris. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva, File)
Multifaceted crisis
In June, a wildcat strike by front-of-house staff and security
workers forced the Louvre to halt operations, stranding thousands of
visitors outside the glass pyramid and underscoring the depth of
anger among employees over overcrowding, understaffing and what
unions called untenable working conditions.
Workers said that the pressure of daily visitor flows — particularly
around the “Mona Lisa” — had become unmanageable and that promised
reforms were arriving too slowly. There were growing complaints that
the infrastructure and staffing of the crumbling medieval structure
haven’t kept pace with the crowds pouring through its galleries.
The resignation came at an especially punishing moment, less than
two weeks after French authorities revealed the separate ticket
fraud scheme.
That case widened scrutiny beyond the jewels robbery and toward the
museum’s day-to-day controls.
Fraud scheme
Prosecutors say tour guides are suspected of — up to 20 times a day
— reusing the same tickets to bring in different visitor groups, at
times allegedly with the help of Louvre employees, in a system
investigators believe operated for a decade.
In a rare interview just days ago with The Associated Press after
the fraud case was made public, the Louvre's No. 2, general
administrator Kim Pham, said that fraud at an institution the size
of the Louvre was “statistically inevitable.”
He argued that the museum’s sheer scale — millions of visitors,
multiple checkpoints and a sprawling historic complex — makes it
uniquely exposed.
But he also acknowledged shortcomings, and said that the museum had
tightened validation checks and increased controls.
New Renaissance
The succession of crises has put new political weight on a project
Macron has heavily championed: the Louvre’s sweeping overhaul plan,
branded the “Louvre New Renaissance.”
Unveiled by Macron in January 2025, the renovation, which could take
up to a decades, aims to modernize a museum widely seen as
overstretched and physically worn down by mass tourism.
The plan includes a new entrance near the Seine River to ease
pressure on I.M. Pei’s pyramid, new underground spaces and a
dedicated room for the “Mona Lisa” with timed access — all intended
to improve crowd flow and reduce the daily crush that has become a
symbol of the Louvre’s success and its dysfunction.
The project is expected to cost roughly 700 million-800 million
euros ($826 million-$944 million), with funding from ticket revenue,
state support, donations and Louvre Abu Dhabi-related income.
The scale and cost of that plan now loom over the search for des
Cars’ successor.
Macron has framed the overhaul as a national priority, comparing its
ambition to other landmark French restoration efforts and casting it
as part of a broader defense of French cultural prestige.
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