PARIS-With the announced departure of the president of the Louvre, speculation is growing about who will succeed him in a fraught period when the new Socialist government is making cuts in the culture budget for the first time in 30 years.
After 12 years in charge of the museum, Henri Loyrette, 60, disclosed Monday that he would depart at the end of his term in April. As the youngest leader ever appointed at the Louvre in 2001, Mr. Loyrette presided over a period of exuberant expansion: a newly opened satellite, Louvre Lens in northern France; ongoing construction of the Abu Dhabi Louvre and the creation of a new Islamic Arts department with sizable donations from Middle Eastern royalty. On his watch, the number of Louvre visitors almost doubled from 5.1 million in 2001 to almost 10 million.
His successor will be the choice of the Socialists, headed by current President Francois Hollande. It is up to the minister of culture to make the appointment. That post is now held by Aurélie Filippetti; she has been making hard choices about the French culture budget, which has been reduced by more than four percent to 2.4 billion euros.
The new government has already clearly cramped the Louvre's ambitions with budget cutbacks that have stalled a reserve warehouse to store artworks in Cergy-Pontoise, northwest of Paris, and a Louvre project to create an annex in the hotel de la Marine, an 18th-century stone building at the Place de la Concorde.
Among the names of potential successors circulating in the French press are museum insiders like Vincent Pomarede, director of the Louvre's painting department, Jean-Luc Martinez, director of the Greek Antiquities department. There are also directors of other French museum whose names have emerged such as Michel Hilaire, of the Fabre Museum in Montpellier or Sylvain Amic, who recently took over at the Museum of Fine Arts in Rouen and Lourent Le Bon, director of the Centre Pompidou-Metz.
The biggest wild card is the notion of appointing a complete outsider to lead the museum, which has become so international that foreigners make up more than 67 percent of its visitors, with the largest group from the United States.
Could the new head of the Louvre be from somewhere other than France? Some of the names circulating are Neil McGregor, director of the British Museum; Colin Bailey, chief curator at the Frick Collection in New York; and Gary Tinterow of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, who earlier this year received the Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters from the French state.
