Louvre Museum Shut Down Due to Staff Strike

Monday morning, when tourists piled in the line to enter the Louvre Museum to see the iconic works, such as the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo, they were disappointed to find out that the famous museum was not open. The museum did not open for four hours because of a “social movement” that the staff started, a museum spokeswoman said.

Throughout the hot afternoon, long and frustrated lines of tourists snaked over the museum’s plaza and beneath the giant glass-and-steel pyramid designed by the architect I.M. Pei. Meanwhile, inside the museum, workers were meeting to discuss issues including workplace conditions and crowd management, driven to the point of a wildcat strike because of problems like inadequate facilities, insufficient space, and overall strain on staff due to visitor numbers.

The Louvre has more than 33,000 works of art, with many sculptures, paintings, and drawings. One of the more famous pieces is Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. The unprecedented popularity of the Mona Lisa has created a unique challenge for the Louvre, often referred to as the “Mona Lisa problem.” It’s a situation where the desire of countless visitors to see this single painting leads to severe overcrowding in its designated gallery. This overcrowding isn’t just an inconvenience; it presents security risks, makes it difficult for visitors to truly appreciate the artwork, and significantly strains the museum’s resources and staff.

To fix this, President Emmanuel Macron proposed a plan in January that the Mona Lisa would move to its own exhibition space, one of several that would be installed underneath the Cour Carrée, the Louvre’s easternmost courtyard, and connected to the existing museum. The painting would be separate from the rest of the museum and would require its own ticket.

According to Christian Galani, a spokesman for the C.G.T.-Culture labor union, which includes workers at the Louvre, at the end of the workers’ monthly meeting, the staff members decided to perform a wildcat, an unauthorized work stoppage without a vote by union membership. “We didn’t plan to go on strike, but the people are so exhausted, they can’t support the conditions getting worse and worse,” Galani said in an interview with The New York Times.

Galani said that in the last 15 years, 200 jobs at the Louvre had been lost and that despite President Macron of France’s promise to significantly update the museum in January, so far “nothing had changed” and the workers were stressed. There are too many visitors, and the rooms are in a dire condition,” he said. “It’s very difficult for the workers.”

For years, the Louvre could not handle overcrowding, largely because many of its galleries were filled to the brim with tour groups. In early 2023, the Louvre announced that it would change the daily attendance to 30,000, instead of the 45,000 it attracted before the coronavirus pandemic. By late 2023, the museum raised its basic ticket price from 17 euros to 22 euros to help with the energy costs and support its free admission programs geared toward local residents.

A spokeswoman for the museum said that the workers’ actions were not a strike but a “social movement” that caused the Louvre to close for about four hours. However, a strike, according to French law, has to be announced.