Louvre director Laurence des Cars sat down for an interview with the New York Times this week, one of her first since last month’s robbery.
In it, des Cars forcefully pushed back on the idea that she had neglected the museum’s security, telling the Times that she had been working on dramatically improving the system this year. Des Cars said that she had already submitted the museum to a broad security review and a new security master plan was devised.
The plan called for an additional 100 cameras added to the museum’s perimeter, and was in the process of being implemented when the thieves struck last month. Several companies, she told the Times, had already bid on the project.
However, the Louvre’s scale and bureaucracy meant that implementation of the plan was slow moving.
“You don’t launch an 80 million-euro master plan—because it’s more than 80 million euros now—just like that,” she said. “There are rules, there are stages in public procurement, there are study phases, there are phases for putting companies into competition.”
“This is not a private museum. This is a public museum that needs to submit to every control,” she added.
The interview with the Times follows on from an announcement des Cars made earlier this week that the museum was implemented several emergency security measures. New anti-intrusion systems will be operational within the next two weeks. Those 100 additional security cameras, however, won’t be fully installed and running until the end of next year. Even emergency measures in France, it seems, move slowly.
