Laurence des Cars, president of the Musée d'Orsay and the Orangerie Museum, will become the new director of the Louvre, TASS reported.

The current director of the museum, Jean-Luc Martinez, and the head of the Paris Picasso Museum, Laurent Le Bon, also applied for the position.

The future director of the Louvre is a specialist in the art of the 19th and early 20th centuries, who began her career at the Orsay Museum as a curator of paintings. In 2014, she was appointed director of the Orangerie Museum, and in 2017 - the Orsay Museum.

As noted by France Inter, among the tasks to be solved by the new head of the Louvre is increasing its attendance. Over the past year, amid the pandemic, attendance at the Louvre has dropped by 72%. In January, the museum reported that 2.7 million people visited the Louvre in 2020, in 2019 this figure was 9.6 million, and in 2018 the museum set a record, receiving 10.2 million people, which is 25% more than in 2017.