It isn’t till the acknowledgments behind Adventures within the Louvre: Methods to Fall in Love with the World’s Best Museum, with sections titled “The Allure,” “Romance,” and “Be Mine,” that creator Elaine Sciolino states she has written it not as an artwork knowledgeable, however as a journalist, for vacationers who see visiting the museum as “an obligation rather than a joy.”
To be truthful, the title alone ought to have warned me that this guide is just not for artwork historians, nor even perhaps artwork lovers. The previous New York Instances Paris bureau chief’s journalism abilities have clearly been put to laborious work in gaining unprecedented entry to the Louvre as a civilian, and teasing content material out of its workers and associates. Many sequences throughout the guide are constructed round Sciolino’s experiential encounters and interactions, such because the labyrinthine underground passageways utilized by the museum’s safety staff, together with an air raid shelter, or witnessing restoration atop scaffolding. However the creator’s lack of artwork historic rigor — even fundamental fact-checking of what she is advised — is excruciating. She feedback, for instance, that Veronese’s “Wedding at Cana” (1562–3), having been plundered by Napoleon, was “so degraded upon arrival that French restorers had to cut it in two and reline it.” No: Relining was a typical apply on the time for acquired works, and it needed to be lower in two as a result of it’s so rattling huge. Elsewhere, wide-eyed sections are dedicated to the Louvre’s state-of-the-art conservation division and prints and drawings rooms the place you may request to deal with works, the creator seemingly unaware that the majority giant establishments even have such services as commonplace.
The Venus de Milo (2nd century BCE) faces a room of vacationers on the Louvre. (picture by way of Wikimedia Commons)
Frustration is compounded by the perpetuation of a number of inane myths: the necessity to worth artwork solely in response to whether or not it’s “beautiful,” the obsession with Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa,” and the necessity to discover a shortcut to understanding a topic by figuring out its unfastened standard counterpart or affiliation. She perpetually surrounds works talked about by their appearances in popular culture — sure, she even cites Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2003) — and devotes whole chapters to the present store (“one irresistible buy for me is the museum’s collection of four loose teas in cylindrical tins, each a different color”); ghosts; and the “APESHIT” (2018) music video Beyoncé filmed there. We’re advised that Beyoncé “loves the Louvre” and “Jay-Z co-owns a French champagne domaine with luxury giant LVMH.”
Sciolino additionally makes an attempt to reply each museum customer’s psychological conundrum: Why am I obliged to see the “Mona Lisa,” regardless of probably not understanding what’s so good about it? She rightly factors out the Louvre’s contradictory place of each bemoaning their holding the portray whereas actively nonetheless selling and benefiting from it. Nonetheless, she appears decided to understand it regardless of its culturally bestowed over-importance, as most vacationers understandably do: “We stared at each other […] Trust me, believe in me, she told me. There were no crowds — there was no noise, no rush, no hype to come between us. We connected. For one fleeting moment, ‘Mona Lisa’ came alive.” I daresay any portray would below the identical circumstances, in the event you willed it to.
A number of the most placing insights come from Sciolino’s exploration of neglected sectors of the museum, together with Persian and Islamic artwork, in addition to girls and girls artists and queer topics. To this point, she has been the Louvre’s champion, even telling us what different Parisian amusements we are able to do when it’s closed on Tuesdays, or gushing over its outpost, the Louvre-Lens, below the heading “Museum with a Conscience.” She is uncharacteristically crucial, nonetheless, of the Louvre’s show of the Musées Nationaux Récupération (MNR) assortment comprising Nazi-looted gadgets whose homeowners have but to be recognized, relegated to a small room within the Richelieu wing, with some deemed vital sufficient to be scattered all through the principle assortment. They’re typically delineated solely by a small “MNR” label on their plaques. Each the show, and efforts for restitution, she argues, are lackluster. “It is haunting to see a painting stolen from someone’s dining room hanging in the Louvre, but even more disturbing are the ‘decorative arts’ pieces,” she writes. “They did not just hang on walls but were handled, touched, perhaps every day, by human beings who became victims of the Holocaust.”
Cowl of Adventures within the Louvre: Methods to Fall in Love with the World’s Best Museum by Elaine Sciolino (Norton, 2025)
For artwork historians, the making of this guide stands out as the most fascinating factor about it. In an episode of The Artwork Angle podcast, Sciolino revealed that she insisted on publishing independently, regardless of the Louvre initially suggesting it undergo their official writer. In granting entry, she stated, the museum additionally required each interview to be monitored by a chaperone. Sciolino argues that overlaying the Louvre was tougher than her earlier reporting on the CIA in Washington, so impenetrable was its paperwork. It’s curious, then, that her account is so in its pocket. Has the entry been on the expense of crucial school? One wonders if “the World’s Greatest Museum” was appended to the title on the Louvre’s request. The guide reads extra like a journey information — even the ultimate chapter recommends bodily which solution to flip for an optimum go to — than the neutral reporting of a journalist.
Sure, I’ve relentlessly scoffed at this guide; it’s clearly not for me, who views the idea of “beauty” solely moot when and having fun with artwork, and cringed each time an art work was described as “seductive.” It was consciously written for people who find themselves new to artwork and need a “way in,” which is itself a legitimate pursuit. Nonetheless, if that method in is so depending on superficiality and populist fluff, who is that this guide actually serving: newcomers with a want to interact with artwork historical past, or the Louvre’s customer figures and standing?
Adventures within the Louvre: Methods to Fall in Love with the World’s Best Museum (2025) by Elaine Sciolino is revealed by Norton and is offered on-line and thru unbiased booksellers.
