The Louvre receives nine million visitors a year and, according to museum officials, the Mona Lisa is the main attraction for 80% of them. On especially busy days, Around 250,000 people line up to see it. And of all of them, a large part feels disappointment.
In February of this year, a study analyzed 18,176 reviews mentioning 100 of the world’s most famous works of art and the museums that house them to find out which experiences were the most disappointing and which ones exceeded expectations. Over there, The Mona Lisa earned the title of the “world’s most disappointing masterpiece”with 37.1% negative reviews.
Museum staff considered different strategies to remedy the situation. In 2019, they changed the color of the walls where it is displayed (from light yellow to “midnight blue”) and implemented changes to the queuing system to see it.
However, museum director Laurence des Cars believes that the situation may be due to the size of the exhibition hall. “It’s a big room, and the Mona Lisa is in the back, behind its security glass, so at first glance it looks like a postage stamp,” he told the French newspaper Le Figaro.
Vincent Delieuvin, the chief curator of 16th-century Italian art, said the idea of moving the painting had been on the table for some time, but this time almost the entire staff is on board. The idea is to relocate it to a basement room, as part of a major renovation the museum is about to undertake (including a new entrance).
After this work, visitors could enter past its famous pyramid directly to the basement, where there would be a room for the Mona Lisa and others for temporary exhibitions. «We have to accept the painting’s status as a global icon, which is beyond our control. Moving the Mona Lisa to a separate room could put an end to public disappointment«concluded the director of Cars.
