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- Hôtel-Dieu, futur siège du Musée de l’Œuvre Notre-Dame si celui-ci est créé
Photo : Didier Rykner - See the image in its page
On 8 December 2023, during a visit to Notre-Dame, the President of the Republic announced a bad decision: the replacement of the stained glass windows, and a good one: the creation of a Musée de l’Œuvre.
More than a year later - but what’s surprising in the end - only the first has moved forward, even though the association Sites & Monuments and La Tribune de l’Art are confidently leading the fight against this vandalism to come (see the articles). On the other hand, the excellent idea of the museum that we were calling for has made virtually no progress and neither Emmanuel Macron nor the Ministry of Culture are talking about it any more, at least publicly, as if they had already buried the project, despite the report submitted by Charles Personnaz in April 2024.
This report has never been made public, which is worrying in itself. From sources within the Ministry of Culture, we have nevertheless learned that the Paris City Council does not want the transformation of the Hôtel-Dieu, which involves a modification of the Local Urban Planning Scheme, to be examined and voted on by the Paris Council because a majority (the right-wing opposition, but also the ecologists and communists) are opposed to the commercial transformation that is planned for part of the site.
The Urban Planning Law provides for another procedure for unilaterally amending the local urban planning programme without seeking the opinion of the municipal council: a project declaration accompanied by a public inquiry. This will take place in the spring.
The Town Hall is thus making itself the objective ally of the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris (APHP), an institution whose lack of interest in heritage we have often criticised. While the APHP is not entirely opposed to a museum, it will only agree to one in a part of the Hôtel-Dieu, to the north-west of the building, opposite the Marché aux Fleurs, which has many shortcomings. A project almost worse than doing nothing, which would therefore not be likely to mobilise the potential sponsors needed for funding.
Two days ago, Le Figaro published an opinion piece to draw attention to this risk. This was signed by numerous academics, both French and foreign (United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Switzerland, etc.), who are concerned that the project may be abandoned. As the text points out, "The Court of Auditors, although not particularly keen to encourage spending, had already emphasised in its 2022 report on the restoration of Notre-Dame the need to quickly consider the creation of a museum near the cathedral to improve the comfort of tourists from all over the world". He also emphasises that "the collections to be enhanced to shed new light on this history are numerous and spectacular". We can only agree with this text.
While the President of the Republic wants to associate his name with a so-called "Renaissance of the Louvre" that will only result in the vandalisation of this museum and the mistreatment of its collections (see our article), it would, on the contrary, be in his interest for posterity to support this new, necessary and useful museum, which is also infinitely less expensive. There is still time to give Notre-Dame the museum it deserves.