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It’s Time to Take Down the Mona Lisa

Category: Visitor Experience
Visitors to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa on Oct. 24. Each day, 30,000 people pass through the gallery where Leonardo’s painting hangs, according to the museum’s director.Credit...Elliott Verdier for The New York Times
Visitors to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa on Oct. 24. Each day, 30,000 people pass through the gallery where Leonardo’s painting hangs, according to the museum’s director.Credit...Elliott Verdier for The New York Times

This art critic has some ideas on how to improve a museum visitor’s experience “of the Kim Kardashian of 16th-century Italian portraiture”.

“Some 80 percent of visitors, according to the Louvre’s research, are here for the Mona Lisa — and most of them leave unhappy. Content in the 20th century to be merely famous, she has become, in this age of mass tourism and digital narcissism, a black hole of anti-art who has turned the museum inside out.”

-Jason farrago

Leonardo's painting is a security hazard, an educational obstacle and not even a satisfying bucket-list item. It's time the Louvre moved it out of the way. PARIS - Even in a city saturated with excellent fall exhibitions, from the Grand Palais's retrospective of El Greco to the Fondation Louis Vuitton's showcase of Charlotte Perriand, the show of the season here is the decade-in-the-works "Leonardo da Vinci," at the Musée du Louvre.

Continue Reading at Nytimes

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