A review of the eight months of Rachida Dati's tenure as Minister of Culture

: Rachida Dati, Minister of Culture
Photo: Laurent Vu (CC BY-SA 3.0); See the image in its page

Rachida Dati has been reappointed Minister of Culture. Although, as usual, we welcomed her appointment (see article), we have subsequently been critical of many of her actions, foremost among them, of course, her support for the presidential plan to replace the stained glass windows in Notre-Dame, against the advice of most of the officials in the Heritage Department and the unanimous opinion of the National Commission for Heritage and Architecture, which is supposed to be advising her. The petition now has almost 220,000 signatories.

Another very negative point is the destruction of part of the Visitation monastery, which we barely mentioned on La Tribune de l’Art but which was closely monitored by the Sites & Monuments association (see here). We met the Minister a few months ago and pointed out a number of issues of concern to the heritage sector. This was one of them, and she gave us little hope. Nevertheless, she could and should have taken action, but she did not.
Similarly, she endorsed the plan to protect the Butte-Rouge, as already validated by Roselyne Bachelot, and which in reality authorises a large number of destructions (see article). To find out more, we refer you to Sites & Monuments, which is following this case in particular, as it did with the Visitation monastery.
Finally, her action to save the Marie Curie pavilion has not been a great success, to say the least (see articles).

We asked his office a few days ago to find out what progress had been made on the issues we had raised.
On the subject of the awning over the former Louvre des Antiquaires (see article), he told us that he had taken real action by writing to all those involved (Fondation Cartier, Jean Nouvel...) to ask for it to be removed. So far without success, which is obviously unacceptable, especially as the Ministry has confirmed that the result is different from what…

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