THOMAS: What is the biggest challenge facing museums today? ROSENBERG: We need to bring people back to museums, and not only to see the “Mona Lisa.” How many people have returned to museums because they discovered their beauty and pleasure? Very few, I suspect. You cannot go to Paris without going to the Louvre. It’s a sort of obligation. I’m not sure it’s always a pleasure, either.
Why is that? Because works of art are not easy to understand. And I think this is a real issue for the future. Until now there was art education in schools. You had a little bit of knowledge about antiquity and Old and New Testament. Now this knowledge is lost all over the world. What is the Annunciation, for example? The Louvre does deal with 1 million children each year. But that’s not enough. If the problem is not taken up by the Ministry of Education, it won’t work. And that’s everywhere. Without education, I am sure we are lost for the future.
In recent years, the big draw has not been the permanent collections but short-term megashows. Yes, it’s true. And I’ve done my share. At the beginning, we thought at the Louvre–like the National Gallery in London–that there was enough in a museum, and that the exhibitions should be in another place. Now we know that to get people back to museums you need to have events.
You also talk of the need to continue to acquire. Why is this so important? First, because tastes change and one has to take into account what becomes fashionable. For example, Vermeer and Georges Latour were completely forgotten and now they are in demand. Second, a museum has to tell a story. The Louvre and the National Gallery of London can really tell the story of painting from the beginning until the period that the museum stops its purpose. When you have holes, you suffer from them, and you need to fill them. And third, the richness of a country depends on its capacity to keep what has been brought to the country in the past. One has always seen that the rich countries have tried to bring in works of art from not-so-rich countries. This goes back to the Greeks, the Romans, the Italians, Napoleon, to the Americans now. To accept that works of art are leaving your country is to accept your decadence.
You propose establishing a national lottery to raise funds for art acquisitions. In France the lottery exists, and the money goes to the state for various projects. I’m trying to invent a new lottery to be used for acquisitions. Unlike in England and Italy, there is no real protection of works of art in France. You can be stopped if the state has the money to pay for it but that’s it. The lottery would give the state the money for these acquisitions.
The Louvre, a state-run institution, is also raising money through corporate sponsorship, like the new Mona Lisa room financed by Japan’s Nippon Television. Is this good for the museum? It’s absolutely needed. We must raise 40 percent of our budget ourselves, through entrance fees and other ways. The remaining 60 percent comes from the state. European museums are going more in the private direction, and it’s logical. The price of a museum is growing every day: new technologies, air conditioning and when you have the crowds like at the Louvre–6 million visitors a year, more than all of Venice–the museum gets run-down quickly. One needs money. Private money.
What is the role of a museum? For pleasure and for learning, and one should not be sacrificed for the other.
Is the “Mona Lisa” the most popular attraction at the Louvre? I would say so, alas, alas. It’s a very beautiful picture, by the way.
