France on Wednesday appointed Laurence des Cars, as the new head of the Louvre. The first woman head will be in charge of the world’s biggest museum. Laurence currently runs the Musee d’Orsay, the Paris landmark museum dedicated to 19th-century art.

“A great museum must face history, including by looking back at the history of our owns institutions,” she told in an interview in April. She was involved in the French government’s decision for the Orsay to hand back a Gustav Klimt painting, ‘Roses’, to the heirs of its previous owner Nora Stiasny. Under her guidance, the museum’s 2019 exhibition “Black Models: From Gericault to Matisse” explored racial and social issues through the description of black figures in visual arts.

Des Cars in September will replace Jean-Luc Martinez, the current Louvre Chief who is known for making the museum more available and less elitist. He was rewarded by a record annual visitor number of over 10 million in 2019 before Covid-19 restrictions reduced visits to a trickle.

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The Louvre, best known as the home of the Mona Lisa, is the world’s largest art museum. It opened in 1793 in the memory of the French Revolution, with an exhibition of just over 500 paintings. It now owns hundreds of thousands of pieces of art, with less than 10 per cent of the permanent display.