Daughter of a journalist and granddaughter of a novelist .. de Carr was the first woman to preside over the Louvre since 1793
After weeks of deliberation, Emmanuel Macron and the French Ministry of Culture decided that Lawrence de Carr would be president of the Louvre World Museum in a precedent that had not happened since the famous museum opened in 1793.
The choice of Lawrence (54 years) was not an accident or a coincidence. Rather, it was the fruit of her success in managing the Dorsey and "Orangery" museums, as well as her specialization in painting in the nineteenth century, and her efforts in developing the Louvre Abu Dhabi museum.
In addition, Lawrence presented an ambitious project to modernize and develop the Louvre Museum, attract French youth to visit it, and establish a new section for the antiquities, paintings and arts of the Byzantine period and the Christians of the East.
The specialized French magazine "Nimro" stated that de Carr would succeed Jean-Luc Martinez, who had been running the Louvre Foundation for the past eight years.
One of De Carr's first tasks will be to restore the museum's popularity after the Corona pandemic caused a dramatic decrease in the number of visitors, after it reached 10 million visitors in 2019.
For her part, the new president of the Louvre, who takes office on September 1, announced that she will strive to make the museum "an echo of society" and to update the means of display while preserving its essence and spirit.
Several months ago, the question that preoccupied those interested in the world of art was who would now lead the largest, most famous and most visited museums in the world?
Despite some expecting him to extend President Jean-Luc Martinez for a third term, the matter finally settled on De Carr to officially become the head of the most famous Parisian institution in the world.
The truth is that Lawrence de Carr has been immersed in the world of culture since her inception, as her father is a journalist and her grandfather is a novelist.
What is more, she studied at the Sorbonne University, worked at the Louvre and then the School of National Heritage, and held the position of curator of the Orsayne Museum in 1994, a position she held for 13 years before becoming the scientific director of Agence France-Muséums, where she contributed to the development of the Louvre Abu Dhabi project.
De Carr specialized in the history and trends of painting in the nineteenth century, and in 2014 she headed the Orangerie Museum, and three years later she headed the Orsay Museum, where she served 4 years before moving to her new position.
On the initiative of exhibitions dedicated to Gustave Courbet, Jean-Leon Jerome, or even the American painters of the 1930s, de Carr was able to highlight works that were at times so famous that they were rarely celebrated and reread.
De Carr was highly regarded in the French and international artistic circles for organizing an art exhibition dedicated to the black model in Western art at the Musée d'Orsay, in 2019.
On the afternoon of Monday, May 24, Lawrence de Carr received a crucial call from French Culture Minister Roselyn Bachelot informing her of her appointment at the head of the largest museum in the world.
In her program presented to the head of state and members of the government, it was evident that they were dazzled by her unique vision of contemporary cultural and artistic issues and the development of the Louvre Museum, which she described as a "community resonance room" and "the home of all arts and artists."
Lawrence de Carr wants to attract more French youth in particular to visit the museum, especially since 70% of its current visitors are foreigners.
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