Latest news with #MonaLisa
Time of India
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
BTS' J-Hope's encore concert behind-the-scenes footage captures OT7 reunion; Fans react: WATCH
BTS recently uploaded a video online that has gone viral. The video consists of behind the scenes footage from J-Hope 's encore stage in Seoul earlier this year. The video showed the first OT7 reunion that happened after all of the members were officially discharged from their mandatory military service! First OT7 reunion caught on camera While most fans got to witness the official OT7 reunion after Suga's discharge, when the group held a live stream to greet fans, they had reunited already once before that. J-Hope recently ended his tour with two encore stages held in Seoul earlier this year, where fellow members Jungkook and Jin also joined him on stage for a special performance. Officially a video of all #BTS members together in 2025 😭💜 — BTS Charts Daily (@btschartsdailyc) July 22, 2025 All seven members of BTS, RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook reunited backstage at the rapper's concert. As soon as the video was shared online, fans went into a frenzy over the reunion. All of the members came together to cheer and support J-Hope for the ending of his solo tour. While the members were cheering J-Hope right before his performance with J-Hope, the rapper sweetly confessed, 'I love you guys seriously', before going up on stage. Jungkook and J-Hope share a sweet moment During one of the videos uploaded online by the group, Jungkook and J-Hope can be seen interacting and practicing for their special stage during the rapper's encore concerts. Jungkook, sweetly asks the older member if it is bothering him that he and Jin will be joining him on stage. The 'Mona Lisa' singer reassures the youngest member of the group, saying that, 'I think the army would love it and hearing these two would gladly perform with me is just so touching. '
Indian Express
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Amar Singh Chamkila and Amy Winehouse are part of the same club, and we could have done something about it
At some point in our lives we have all felt stuck, helpless, alone and misunderstood. Maybe it was a new school or a bad breakup, or maybe you lost your job or lost someone close. When tragedy befalls our lives, we either panic or we shut down, and be it any act of our story, there are usually only two ways to go after that. One either turns to an escape that digs an even deeper hole for you to get out of, or someone hears your cries (maybe your own conscience), and you overcome that hurdle. However, the sinking human doesn't stop asking for help, maybe not in so many words, but their actions express angst and misery; they express the need for a hand. But the irony of life is that sometimes the loudest cries don't reach any ears, and singer Amy Winehouse is one of the biggest examples of this, and her exit from the stage of life is one of our biggest failures. Born Amy Jade Winehouse, she came from a family that had its roots deep in music. While her parents were both from the working class, her uncles and grandmother were products and producers of jazz, and that is how the English singer would discover music very early in her life. A beast that she would care for and a beast that would prove to be the only one standing besides her till her last breath. I remember watching the Imtiaz Ali film about the legendary Punjabi singer Amar Singh Chamkila and then reading about the man. No matter how you look at the story, it's bound to have a 'Mona Lisa effect' on you, because no matter how you try to describe it, a young strong artiste lost his life because people simply didn't agree with his lyrics. The story makes you feel queasy about speaking your mind, but even though Amar Singh and his wife were murdered, and Amy passed away due to alcohol poisoning, there are similarities in how and why these two left an unforgiving world. One was shot, one was left to die; one was silenced and one was forgotten. Amar was killed because someone decided to do something horrific about his brand of music and what he represented, and Amy was killed because no one decided to do anything about her very discernible afflictions. They were both 27 when they passed away. ALSO READ: Britney Spears and Lata Mangeshkar share the same connection that Parineeta the film and Louis Armstrong do, and it has to do with cheating Throughout her life, Amy was plagued with substance abuse and addiction issues. Cancelled shows, severe weight loss, and frequent trips to the hospital were all signs that something was extremely wrong. At one point during 2008, Amy reportedly stopped the use of illegal substances, and to deal with the withdrawal symptoms, she quickly turned to alcohol. Her marriage to Blake Fielder-Civil is believed by many to be the catalyst of her already bad addiction issues, and the singer herself called it a 'marriage based on doing drugs'. Alcohol came and never left, as the singer continued dropping riveting music, so personal and moving, you felt like she was sitting in front of you and telling you her story. She has over 30 million records sold worldwide, and not one person who bought those records paid heed to the fact that she needed to be saved from herself and that the 'modern-day Bardot' needed to be left alone by paparazzi and required attention from those close to her. She wasn't even suffering in silence; everything was on display for the world to see. Amy sang and drank till her instrument and its body stopped working altogether, and this wasn't the first time we lost an artiste to the infamous '27 Club'. Almost 17 years before Amy passed away, the world lost another great, troubled and tenacious mind, again at the age of 27: Kurt Donald Cobain of the band Nirvana. For many people out there of a certain generation, you didn't listen to Nirvana because you were a rock music aficionado; rather, it was Nirvana who opened the gates for many to one of the greatest ways of disseminating love, anguish, fear, admiration and glory. Perched on a gargoyle, the man saw the culture he built and a world so intertwined in it that they forgot the maker. With technically just 4 albums, Nirvana would go on to sell more than 80 million records worldwide. Also riddled with problems of substance abuse, Kurt would make many round trips to the hospital due to several overdose episodes. After an intervention hosted by his wife, the singer would agree to a detox trip to a facility, but the walls caved in and he escaped. He flew to Seattle, sitting beside Guns N' Roses' Duff McKagan, which probably was his last connection to music before he killed himself in his Lake Washington residence with a weapon he had bought for 'protection'. In 1971, 23 years before this, the world lost Jim Morrison of The Doors, and just a year prior to that, Jimi Hendrix was gone, both at the age of 27. Two of the most influential musicians of all time, two men who will never truly be able to fathom the kind of effect they still have on the world, why every guitarist's first instinct is to grow out their hair, and why all of them dream of playing in front of the crowd at Woodstock Festival. ALSO READ: Justin Bieber album Swag review: Bieber needs to take notes from Pritam and keep it simple There are some artists who acknowledged this 'club' and even mentioned their possible membership, like Mac Miller and Juice WRLD. In his song 'Brand Name' from the album GO:OD AM, Miller called out all the people who sell him drugs and asked them to make sure that they don't spike it because he doesn't wish to die at 27. Juice talks about the club in his song 'Legends' and states, 'What's the 27 Club? We aren't making it past 21.' Miller passed away at age 26 while Juice was 21 at the time of his death, and both men died from accidental drug overdoses. All of these artists, their lives, and the eerily coincidental troubles they had with addiction, co-dependency and loneliness reveal a deeper and a much more problematic picture. Accepting defeat in companionship was never truly looked at from such an isolated lens until Amy's 'Back to Black'. Hendrix inspired someone who will go down as probably the greatest guitarist of all time. Eric Clapton, The Doors didn't just become one of the most influential bands of all time but the closet from Narnia that takes you back to 1967. How did we miss all the signs, and why do we continue to do so? Look at the way we depict our artistes in films, songs or through any kind of medium. Filled with pain, maybe one absentee parent, maybe both, can't handle relationships but has no problem writing, singing or painting about it. The film Kodachrome by Matt Raso has a scene where the characters of Ed Harris, Jason Sudeikis, and Elisabeth Olsen are riding in a car. Jason asks Harris, 'Are you ever happy?' and he replies, 'Happiness is bulls**t; it's the great myth of the late 20th century. Do you think Picasso, Hemingway or Hendrix was happy? No art worth a damn is ever created out of happiness.' If artistes claim to be this unique piece made by God, then 'not being happy' cannot be the one thing they collectively decided to agree upon. I get that being out of your comfort zone and being challenged pushes an individual to fight, but that can't be a fight unto death. There is also the argument that once the artiste stops fighting, they won't be creating art that truly galvanises people or tells them to get up and keep going. But if the bout needs to continue until the final bell of these people's lives, then why can't some of us fight with them? Whether you criticise them or appreciate them, we end up putting them on such a high pedestal that they are automatically dehumanised, and hence a leaked picture which has them drinking or smoking or taking drugs won't induce concern in your brain, but curiosity. Would you react the same way if the person in the photograph was someone you knew? The relationship we have with the people who provide us with art is a toxic one, and we are the red flags, people. It's sad to think about the number of great lives that could have been saved if their fans, the media covering them, and, in some cases, the people managing them had even a modicum of empathy for them. Eminem got out; so did Sir Elton John, and Clapton made it to the other side just like Keith Urban. We have good examples as well, examples which tell us that it is possible to come out of that pit we talked about, no matter how deep you have dug yourself. So this is to all the greats who felt alone while being watched by the whole world; here's to you.
Time of India
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Was Mona Lisa based on Leonardo da Vinci's male lover? A brief history of queerness
There's an uncanny resemblance between da Vinci's John the Baptist and his Mona Lisa: Were they modeled after the same person? (Photos: In 1476, a young Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was investigated by the Florentine moral authorities. Someone had anonymously accused him of fornicating with a 17-year-old sex worker. But the charges were dropped because of a lack of evidence. German literary historian Dino Heicker, the author of a book about the history of queerness," says there are contemporary sources that prove Leonardo loved men and was particularly taken with an apprentice 28 years younger than him named Gian Giacomo Caprotti, whom he nicknamed Salai ("little devil"). They lived together for many years. A few years ago, Italian art historians thought they had found proof that the world-famous Mona Lisa was not a depiction of Lisa del Giocondo, the wife of a Florentine merchant, but of Caprotti instead. He modeled for da Vinci several times and researchers say that the resemblance is unmistakable. Additionally, the letters L and S (for Leonardo and Salai) can even be seen in the eyes of the Mona Lisa, as well as the endearing words, "mon salai," which could also be an anagram of "Mona Lisa. " But the Louvre Museum, where the world-famous painting hangs, isn't convinced of the theory? Da Vinci and his companion took their secrets to their graves. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like AirSense 11 – Smart tech for deep sleep ResMed Buy Now Undo In 1550, Leonardo's first biographer, Giorgio Vasari, wrote that the painter took "peculiar pleasure" in the beautiful boy, the word "peculiar" functioning as a euphemism for da Vinci's queerness. The biblical city of Sodom as a den of iniquity "When a majority defines what is normal and abnormal and declares a binary gender model to be the norm, this creates a difficult environment for minorities who feel differently," Heiker says. In his book, he lists some of the draconian punishments that were inflicted upon queer, non-binary or transgender people in the past. They were accused of indulging in what was referred to at the time as an "unnatural" lifestyle and at times put in chains, stoned, castrated or even burned at the stake. Those meting the punishment sometimes used the Bible to legitimize their persecution of queer people, especially the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah — these cities were destroyed by God because of "sinful" behavior. The term "sodomy" has also been used as a synonym for homosexuality. This story "provided the blueprint for centuries of stigmatization toward other kinds of people." In 1512, the Spanish conquistador Vasco Nunez de Balboa ordered his dogs to maul Indigenous people in America, accusing them of having committed "the horrible sin of sodomy." Varieties of love in antiquity On the other hand, there were also societies in which many forms of queerness were generally accepted. For example, during antiquity, it was common for men to have a male lover in addition to wives. The Roman emperor Hadrian was so heartbroken by the death of his beloved Antinous that he had him posthumously declared as a god, and erected numerous statues and places of worship to honor the beautiful youth. The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC) said that lawmakers on the island of Crete had come up with something very special to celebrate new births: pederasty, or "boy love," when an older man took a young man into his home to train him sexually. "Sexual favors were expected from the younger man, but this was not viewed disparagingly by society," explains Dino Heicker. Love between women was also commonplace. On the island of Lesbos, the poet Sappho paid homage to the beauty of the female form in her verses. And models for a variety of different kinds of love were found in the world of the gods — especially Zeus, the father of the gods, and the epitome of queerness. This term did not exist at the time, but he transformed himself into women, animals, and even a cloud in order to have sex with the object of his desire. In ancient times, there was nothing considered wrong with men having sex with other men or boys, "as long as they played the active role," says Heicker. "The penetrated man, i.e. the inferior man, was considered effeminate and was considered socially inferior." In the Roman Empire, people liked to accuse their political opponents of being sexually passive, because "it was a way of tarnishing their honor." A 'crime against nature' The spread of Christianity brought an end to the leniency towards same-sex love. The bishop and Benedictine monk, Petrus Damiani (1006-1072) was one of the most influential clergymen of the 11th century. He railed against fornication, which he saw spreading even in monasteries: "The befouling cancer of sodomy," he wrote, "is, in fact, spreading so through the clergy or rather, like a savage beast, is raging with such shameless abandon through the flock of Christ. " Sodomy, he was convinced, was the result of diabolical whispers. Among the samurai warriors in Japan and at the Chinese imperial court, there was a more relaxed attitude towards queerness; same-sex love was common among men. In 1549, the Jesuit priest Francisco de Xavier noted: "The Buddhist priests constantly commit crimes against nature and do not even deny it. They openly admit it." The LGBTQ+ who's who In later centuries and modern times, various LGBTQ+ figures — including among royalty — achieved fame. Heicker's book lists the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), the Irish writer and playwright Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), the US writer James Baldwin (1924-1987) and also Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, two Irish women who retreated to a remote valley in Wales around 1780 and who were eyed suspiciously as the "Ladies of Llangollen." They were all just trying to find happiness in their own way. The diaries of Anne Lister aka 'Gentleman Jack' The English landowner Anne Lister (1791-1840) left behind a set of diaries that was added to the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 2011. "In these 26 volumes, she writes in detail about lesbian sex and her relationship with women," explains Heicker. Lister developed a secret code so that no uninitiated person could read her confessions, which were not deciphered until 1930. In her village, she was often referred to as "Gentleman Jack" but was largely left undisturbed. Lister's writing had a significant influence on the direction of British gender studies and stories about women. The third gender From the Mahu on Tahiti to the Muxes of the Zapotec people in Mexico, the Hijras in South Asia and the Lhamanas of the Zuni culture in north America: for thousands of years, across cultures, people have felt they belonged to the third gender, identifying neither as men nor as women. "There was much greater diversity than the narrow, binary gender model would have us think today," says Heicker. "The Zuni, for example, do not assume that gender is innate, rather they see it as a social construct. " In Germany today, the third gender is referred to as "diverse." "Queer people, especially in Germany, have had to fight for freedoms previous generations could only dream of," says Heicker. "In 1994, Paragraph 175( which criminalized sexual acts between men, Editor's note ) was finally removed from the penal code. Same-sex marriage has been legalized, and sexual discrimination is now an offence. On the other hand, and here comes the big but: these achievements must continuously also be protected, especially in the face of attempts to turn back the clock."
Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
The Louvre makeover that will push up price of seeing Mona Lisa
A baking summer's afternoon at the Louvre. Milling around the Mona Lisa are maybe 150 people, all with their phones held high above their heads so they can snap that enigmatic smile. Meanwhile, in the vast galleries surrounding Leonardo's masterpiece, an eternal throng of visitors from every corner of the globe trudges wearily on — most, this far into the gallery, seemingly oblivious to the glorious art around them. Paris's great museum has about nine miles of galleries, spread over 403 rooms. You enter it from beneath IM Pei's celebrated glass pyramid, which on a day like this behaves like a giant magnifying glass for the blazing sun. Many visitors probably won't venture more than half a mile into the heart of the museum. But in this huge, former royal palace there is one tranquil room. Far from the madding crowd, Laurence des Cars, 59, the first female director of the Louvre in 228 years, sits in her book-lined office, the picture of the formidable, Sorbonne-educated Parisian intellectual she is. If she is physically distanced from the heaving mass of humanity trudging round her domain, however, her brain is constantly occupied with it. 'One of my first decisions when I became the director in 2021 was to limit our daily admissions to 30,000,' she says. 'You know that, just before Covid, the Louvre was getting ten million visitors a year? When I got here the staff said, 'Please let's not go back to that because some days we were up to 45,000 visitors.' And that figure is too much. Even now we are saturated. The building is suffocating. It's not good for staff, visitors or the art.' Last month the Louvre's staff emphasised their grievances by going on a spontaneous strike (a 'mass expression of exasperation', their union official said), leaving thousands of tourists outside with no idea why they weren't being let in. 'It wasn't a strike,' des Cars says firmly. 'It was a meeting with the unions because of the conditions and especially the heat. I put in place immediate measures to make things better and we reopened that afternoon.' All the world's top museums — from the Vatican in Rome to the British Museum in London — are facing this same problem: huge congestion, especially around the handful of masterpieces that every tourist has heard of. But the overcrowding is felt most acutely by the Louvre, which still receives more visitors (8.7 million last year) than any other museum, yet has some of the worst facilities. We know this because six months ago a memo outlining its problems was leaked to a Paris newspaper. It caused a stir not just because it was addressed to Rachida Dati, France's culture minister, but because it was written by des Cars. She was jaw-droppingly frank. 'Visiting the Louvre is a physical ordeal,' she wrote. 'Visitors have no space to take a break. The food options and restroom facilities are insufficient in volume, falling below international standards. The signage needs to be completely redesigned.' Pei's pyramid, she went on, creates a 'very inhospitable' atmosphere on hot days. Other parts of the old building are 'no longer watertight'. Nobody has revealed who leaked the memo, but it's hard to imagine des Cars being upset by the revelation because within days came a dramatic intervention from on high. President Macron announced a redevelopment project that he called the 'nouvelle renaissance' of the Louvre. It's masterminded by des Cars and every bit as radical a reshaping as François Mitterrand's 'grand projét' of the 1980s, which led to Pei's pyramid. By chance it will run simultaneously with something similar in London: the £1 billion masterplan to renovate the British Museum, a coincidence that hasn't escaped des Cars' notice. 'I talk a lot with Nick Cullinan [the BM's director],' she says. 'He's wonderful, a great professional and he's dealing with exactly the same issues.' The most controversial feature of des Cars' plan is her proposed solution to the problem of that huge rugby scrum around the Mona Lisa. She wants to remove the painting to one of several new underground galleries to be excavated under the Cour Carrée courtyard, where it will get its own entrance requiring punters to buy an additional ticket (the price is yet to be decided). • The secret life of the Louvre: inside the world's biggest museum She also envisages a second entrance to the Louvre on the far side from where the pyramid is. 'The idea of having just one entrance to this enormous museum was a nice idea in the 1980s when the Louvre had just four million visitors a year,' she says. 'But that was before the Berlin Wall fell, before the Chinese started travelling, before international tourism reached the levels we have today. We are going back to what was always the case — several entrances for the Louvre.' At the same time the museum will be given a technical makeover. That will take ten years, des Cars estimates, whereas she suggests that the Mona Lisa gallery and the new entrance will be ready by 2031 or 2032. 'We are running a competition to find an architect and will appoint one early next year,' she says. 'And the Louvre won't close at all. That's the strength of having a very large building. You can rebuild half of it and still function in the other half.' One benefit of all this, des Cars says, is that it will help people to get to different galleries more quickly, introducing more lifts and better signage. 'On the second floor we have the most extraordinary collection of French paintings anywhere in the world and virtually nobody looks at them,' she says. 'You start to think, what's wrong with Poussin? The answer is nothing. The real problem is that to get from the pyramid to Poussin takes 20 to 25 minutes, and that's if you walk quickly and don't get lost. If we can sort out these problems people will discover many new joys.' It comes at a price, though. The ten-year project is expected to cost about £700 million. Unlike the British Museum's masterplan, however, at least half the required funding is already guaranteed. 'The technical renovation will be funded by the Ministry of Culture,' des Cars says. 'As for the new galleries and entrance, our trademark licence deal with the Louvre Abu Dhabi [which des Cars spent six years helping to set up] will give us at least £175 million. The rest we will raise from corporate and private supporters.' Even here, des Cars has an advantage over her British counterparts. 'When you say the word Louvre people all over the world pay attention,' she says. The gallery has one other huge income stream not available to UK museums. It charges for admission and the ticket prices are about to go up — £19 for EU citizens and a hefty £26 for non-EU visitors, including the poor old Brits. Sounds as if we need to rejoin the EU, I say. 'Please do!' des Cars says, beaming. But what does she think of the UK's generous policy of keeping its national museums free to all, even foreigners? 'I am absolutely not allowed to make any judgment on that,' she says with a laugh, and then makes one anyway. 'I mean, it's very admirable but is it sustainable in today's world? That's a political decision. I leave you to have your debate.' • Best time to visit the Louvre: top tips for your trip The daughter and granddaughter of distinguished French writers, des Cars was a respected art historian, writing a classic study of the pre-Raphaelites before she started running big Parisian museums (she was head of the Musée d'Orsay and the Musée de l'Orangerie before the Louvre). Surely it must break her heart to see thousands of people using great art merely as background for their selfies, disrupting other visitors' enjoyment in the process? Has she considered banning the use of phones, as other art galleries have done? 'I know they are trying but I simply don't know how you do it,' she says. 'We considered it when I was at the Orangerie and the security team said, 'We can't force people not to use phones.' Also I think it's dangerous to go against the times we live in, but you can remind people that they are in a cultural space and need to respect each other, the staff and the artworks.' • Mona Lisa to get her own room in the Louvre And perhaps be a bit more curious about venturing into galleries that don't contain the most famous paintings on the planet? 'We are already making changes to attract people to less-visited parts of the museum,' des Cars says. 'For instance, we could have put our new Louvre Couture [the museum's first venture into fashion] in our exhibitions space, but instead we placed it within the department of decorative arts and now those galleries get a hugely increased number of visitors, especially young people.' As the Louvre's first female director, can she do anything to mitigate the fact that the vast majority of artworks here were created by men? 'You cannot change history but there are other ways of addressing that question. In the spring of 2027 I'm programming an exhibition on the theme of amazons, ancient and modern — from Greek women warriors to powerful women today. It will be a fascinating journey.' And how is this very powerful woman enjoying her own fascinating journey? 'When I was appointed I felt ready to run the Louvre, which sounds immodest,' des Cars replies. 'Maybe I will be a disaster and someone will have to shout, 'Stop!' I don't know.' I would be amazed if anyone did that — or at least not until the mid-2030s, when she has finished remaking the Louvre for the 21st century. Additional research by Ziba Manteghi
Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
The Mona Lisa millions — behind the scenes at the world's busiest museum
A baking summer's afternoon at the Louvre. Milling around the Mona Lisa are maybe 150 people, all with their phones held high above their heads so they can snap that enigmatic smile. Meanwhile, in the vast galleries surrounding Leonardo's masterpiece, an eternal throng of visitors from every corner of the globe trudges wearily on — most, this far into the gallery, seemingly oblivious to the glorious art around them. Paris's great museum has about nine miles of galleries, spread over 403 rooms. You enter it from beneath IM Pei's celebrated glass pyramid, which on a day like this behaves like a giant magnifying glass for the blazing sun. Many visitors probably won't venture more than half a mile into the heart of the museum. But in this huge, former royal palace there is one tranquil room. Far from the madding crowd, Laurence des Cars, 59, the first female director of the Louvre in 228 years, sits in her book-lined office, the picture of the formidable, Sorbonne-educated Parisian intellectual she is. If she is physically distanced from the heaving mass of humanity trudging round her domain, however, her brain is constantly occupied with it. 'One of my first decisions when I became the director in 2021 was to limit our daily admissions to 30,000,' she says. 'You know that, just before Covid, the Louvre was getting ten million visitors a year? When I got here the staff said, 'Please let's not go back to that because some days we were up to 45,000 visitors.' And that figure is too much. Even now we are saturated. The building is suffocating. It's not good for staff, visitors or the art.' Last month the Louvre's staff emphasised their grievances by going on a spontaneous strike (a 'mass expression of exasperation', their union official said), leaving thousands of tourists outside with no idea why they weren't being let in. 'It wasn't a strike,' des Cars says firmly. 'It was a meeting with the unions because of the conditions and especially the heat. I put in place immediate measures to make things better and we reopened that afternoon.' All the world's top museums — from the Vatican in Rome to the British Museum in London — are facing this same problem: huge congestion, especially around the handful of masterpieces that every tourist has heard of. But the overcrowding is felt most acutely by the Louvre, which still receives more visitors (8.7 million last year) than any other museum, yet has some of the worst facilities. We know this because six months ago a memo outlining its problems was leaked to a Paris newspaper. It caused a stir not just because it was addressed to Rachida Dati, France's culture minister, but because it was written by des Cars. She was jaw-droppingly frank. 'Visiting the Louvre is a physical ordeal,' she wrote. 'Visitors have no space to take a break. The food options and restroom facilities are insufficient in volume, falling below international standards. The signage needs to be completely redesigned.' Pei's pyramid, she went on, creates a 'very inhospitable' atmosphere on hot days. Other parts of the old building are 'no longer watertight'. Nobody has revealed who leaked the memo, but it's hard to imagine des Cars being upset by the revelation because within days came a dramatic intervention from on high. President Macron announced a redevelopment project that he called the 'nouvelle renaissance' of the Louvre. It's masterminded by des Cars and every bit as radical a reshaping as François Mitterrand's 'grand projét' of the 1980s, which led to Pei's pyramid. By chance it will run simultaneously with something similar in London: the £1 billion masterplan to renovate the British Museum, a coincidence that hasn't escaped des Cars' notice. 'I talk a lot with Nick Cullinan [the BM's director],' she says. 'He's wonderful, a great professional and he's dealing with exactly the same issues.' The most controversial feature of des Cars' plan is her proposed solution to the problem of that huge rugby scrum around the Mona Lisa. She wants to remove the painting to one of several new underground galleries to be excavated under the Cour Carrée courtyard, where it will get its own entrance requiring punters to buy an additional ticket (the price is yet to be decided). • The secret life of the Louvre: inside the world's biggest museum She also envisages a second entrance to the Louvre on the far side from where the pyramid is. 'The idea of having just one entrance to this enormous museum was a nice idea in the 1980s when the Louvre had just four million visitors a year,' she says. 'But that was before the Berlin Wall fell, before the Chinese started travelling, before international tourism reached the levels we have today. We are going back to what was always the case — several entrances for the Louvre.' At the same time the museum will be given a technical makeover. That will take ten years, des Cars estimates, whereas she suggests that the Mona Lisa gallery and the new entrance will be ready by 2031 or 2032. 'We are running a competition to find an architect and will appoint one early next year,' she says. 'And the Louvre won't close at all. That's the strength of having a very large building. You can rebuild half of it and still function in the other half.' One benefit of all this, des Cars says, is that it will help people to get to different galleries more quickly, introducing more lifts and better signage. 'On the second floor we have the most extraordinary collection of French paintings anywhere in the world and virtually nobody looks at them,' she says. 'You start to think, what's wrong with Poussin? The answer is nothing. The real problem is that to get from the pyramid to Poussin takes 20 to 25 minutes, and that's if you walk quickly and don't get lost. If we can sort out these problems people will discover many new joys.' It comes at a price, though. The ten-year project is expected to cost about £700 million. Unlike the British Museum's masterplan, however, at least half the required funding is already guaranteed. 'The technical renovation will be funded by the Ministry of Culture,' des Cars says. 'As for the new galleries and entrance, our trademark licence deal with the Louvre Abu Dhabi [which des Cars spent six years helping to set up] will give us at least £175 million. The rest we will raise from corporate and private supporters.' Even here, des Cars has an advantage over her British counterparts. 'When you say the word Louvre people all over the world pay attention,' she says. The gallery has one other huge income stream not available to UK museums. It charges for admission and the ticket prices are about to go up — £19 for EU citizens and a hefty £26 for non-EU visitors, including the poor old Brits. Sounds as if we need to rejoin the EU, I say. 'Please do!' des Cars says, beaming. But what does she think of the UK's generous policy of keeping its national museums free to all, even foreigners? 'I am absolutely not allowed to make any judgment on that,' she says with a laugh, and then makes one anyway. 'I mean, it's very admirable but is it sustainable in today's world? That's a political decision. I leave you to have your debate.' • Best time to visit the Louvre: top tips for your trip The daughter and granddaughter of distinguished French writers, des Cars was a respected art historian, writing a classic study of the pre-Raphaelites before she started running big Parisian museums (she was head of the Musée d'Orsay and the Musée de l'Orangerie before the Louvre). Surely it must break her heart to see thousands of people using great art merely as background for their selfies, disrupting other visitors' enjoyment in the process? Has she considered banning the use of phones, as other art galleries have done? 'I know they are trying but I simply don't know how you do it,' she says. 'We considered it when I was at the Orangerie and the security team said, 'We can't force people not to use phones.' Also I think it's dangerous to go against the times we live in, but you can remind people that they are in a cultural space and need to respect each other, the staff and the artworks.' • Mona Lisa to get her own room in the Louvre And perhaps be a bit more curious about venturing into galleries that don't contain the most famous paintings on the planet? 'We are already making changes to attract people to less-visited parts of the museum,' des Cars says. 'For instance, we could have put our new Louvre Couture [the museum's first venture into fashion] in our exhibitions space, but instead we placed it within the department of decorative arts and now those galleries get a hugely increased number of visitors, especially young people.' As the Louvre's first female director, can she do anything to mitigate the fact that the vast majority of artworks here were created by men? 'You cannot change history but there are other ways of addressing that question. In the spring of 2027 I'm programming an exhibition on the theme of amazons, ancient and modern — from Greek women warriors to powerful women today. It will be a fascinating journey.' And how is this very powerful woman enjoying her own fascinating journey? 'When I was appointed I felt ready to run the Louvre, which sounds immodest,' des Cars replies. 'Maybe I will be a disaster and someone will have to shout, 'Stop!' I don't know.' I would be amazed if anyone did that — or at least not until the mid-2030s, when she has finished remaking the Louvre for the 21st century. Additional research by Ziba Manteghi
