The excellent report of the inquiry commission on French museum security has been published

La Tribune de l’Art is sufficiently critical of public policy not to fail to notice when those in office restore some dignity to their mandate. The National Assembly inquiry commissionFrench National Assembly on museum security, initiated by Alexandre Portier, who chaired it, and with Alexis Corbière as rapporteur, not only took place in an excellent atmosphere, even though the two Members belong to rather different groups [1], but its report is remarkable. It was, moreover, adopted unanimously and on a cross-party basis by all parliamentary groups.

In order to make it easier to understand how they arrived at their forty recommendations, almost all of them relevant, the report takes the time to recall the context of French museums, in a synthesis that anyone would benefit from reading. While we often regret the approximations and errors made by parliamentarians [2], we found virtually no substantive errors; each proposal is supported, and we agree with most of the findings.

This morning, the two MPs presented the conclusions of their commission to the press. It should first be noted that they fully endorsed the analyses we have been making here about the Louvre since the theft, and even before. They adopted the expression describing the museum as a “State within the State”, a phrase used by a trade unionist cited in the report, but one we were already using in 2013 (see this article)!
They were also very severe regarding the management of the Louvre by Laurence des Cars, both concerning the supposed priority given to security and safety, which in reality was by no means at the heart of her concerns, and also regarding the master plan and the delays accumulated, which we have highlighted on several occasions and which they confirm were both real and unjustified. As Alexis Corbière puts it: « the criticisms made of the previous master plan were not always well founded, since the issues raised there had already been largely taken into account ». His conclusion is that at least « twenty to twenty-seven months were lost », and, without rewriting history, « when investments are delayed, when decisions are postponed and a burglary then occurs, one cannot fail to ask questions ».

All of this, of course, and much else besides, is included in the report. It is so rich that it will be difficult to analyse it in full. But the reader will benefit from reading it on the website of the French National Assembly. We shall nevertheless attempt to retain the essentials by following the grouping of the forty recommendations into six objectives, as proposed by the rapporteur and the chair in a document issued after the press conference.

Improve the strategic steering of institutions by their supervisory authority in matters of security

The State within the State denounced by the two MPs must therefore be brought back…