• Christophe Leribault has been appointed Louvre director, following Laurence des Cars’s departure.
• He inherits a museum roiled by staff strikes, damaging leaks, and security concerns in the wake of a brazen heist.
• Leribault, formerly head of Versailles and Musée d’Orsay, will also oversee the institution’s planned $820 million renovation.

The Louvre has tapped Christophe Leribault as its new director. The seasoned cultural leader has been director of the Palace of Versailles since 2024, having previously helmed Paris’s Musée d’Orsay and Musée de l’Orangerie.

Leribault replaces Laurence des Cars, the museum’s first female director, whose resignation was announced yesterday. She had faced heavy criticism amid the fallout from the shocking $102 million heist of France’s crown jewels on October 19, which exposed the museum’s inept and outdated security system. Leribault must now steer the museum through a period of reputational crisis, including staff strikes, a damaging leak, and the same ticketing scandal that affected the Palace of Versailles under his leadership.

He will also oversee Des Cars’s new $92 million master plan for improved security, as well as an ambitious $820 million renovation, first announced in January 2025.

Staff members striking outside the Louvre Museum, December 15, 2025. Photo: Jerome Gilles / NurPhoto via Getty Images.

It is not the first time that Leribault, who was chosen by French president Emmanuel Macron, has replaced Des Cars: in 2021, succeeded her as director of the Musée d’Orsay. The Louvre role will see him return to a museum where he previously served as deputy director of graphic arts from 2006 to 2012.

In recent years, however, the museum has faced an onslaught of challenges. Several audits prior to Des Cars arrival at the Louvre in 2021 had identified longstanding security issues. One report from 2018 identified the very window the thieves used to break in as a point of concern. Recent investigations have revealed that former director Jean-Luc Martinez, who led the Louvre from 2013 to 2021, had developed a security overhaul plan. Des Cars had sought to revise the proposal, leading to delays in its implementation.

President of the Louvre Museum Laurence des Cars looks on during her appearance before the National Assembly cultural affairs committee at the Palais Bourbon in Paris, on November 19, 2025. Photo: Bertrand Guay / AFP via Getty Images.

However, Des Cars had been open about the museum’s mounting troubles long before the October heist. In January 2025, a letter she wrote to France’s culture minister Rachida Dati was leaked to the press. Des Cars had implored the minister to take action to address “the severe reality of the state of our overworked buildings.” Among the listed complaints were “worrying temperature variations that endanger the conservation of the artworks” and parts of the building that are “very degraded” and “no longer watertight.”

Macron publicly addressed these concerns by promising a mammoth $820 million renovation that would see various structural changes to the museum, including a new entrance and a new room for the Mona Lisa. It is now Leribault’s responsibility to see through this project, dubbed the “Nouvelle Renaissance.” Last month striking staff demanded that Des Cars re-evaluate the renovation plan, claiming that she had prioritized splashy features over more urgent, less visible maintenance work that is needed to safeguard employees, visitors, and the collection.

This week has seen a widespread shake up of top leadership in Paris’s museums with the announcement that Petit Palais director Annick Lemoine has been tapped to be the next president of the Musée d’Orsay. The post has a been vacant since the sudden death of Sylvain Amic in August.