It is not until the acknowledgments at the back of Adventures in the Louvre: How to Fall in Love with the World’s Greatest Museum, with sections titled “The Allure,” “Romance,” and “Be Mine,” that author Elaine Sciolino states she has written it not as an art expert, but as a journalist, for tourists who see visiting the museum as “an obligation rather than a joy.”
To be fair, the title alone should have warned me that this book is not for art historians, nor perhaps even art enthusiasts. The former New York Times Paris bureau chief’s journalism skills have clearly been put to hard work in gaining unprecedented access to the Louvre as a civilian, and teasing content out of its staff and associates. Many sequences across the book are constructed around Sciolino’s experiential encounters and interactions, such as the labyrinthine underground passageways used by the museum’s security team, including an air raid shelter, or witnessing restoration atop scaffolding. But the author’s lack of art historical rigor — even basic fact-checking of what she is told — is excruciating. She comments, for example, 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 common practice at the time for acquired works, and it had to be cut in two because it’s so damn big. Elsewhere, wide-eyed sections are devoted to the Louvre’s state-of-the-art conservation department and prints and drawings rooms where you can request to handle works, the author seemingly unaware that most large institutions also have such facilities as standard.
Frustration is compounded by the perpetuation of several inane myths: the need to value art solely according to whether it is “beautiful,” the obsession with Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa,” and the need to find a shortcut to understanding a subject by identifying its loose popular counterpart or association. She perpetually surrounds works mentioned by their appearances in pop culture — yes, she even cites Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2003) — and devotes entire chapters to the gift shop (“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 are told that Beyoncé “loves the Louvre” and “Jay-Z co-owns a French champagne domaine with luxury giant LVMH.”
Sciolino also attempts to answer every museum visitor’s mental conundrum: Why am I obliged to see the “Mona Lisa,” despite not really understanding what’s so good about it? She rightly points out the Louvre’s contradictory position of both bemoaning their holding the painting while actively still promoting and profiting from it. Still, she seems determined to appreciate it despite its culturally bestowed over-importance, as most tourists 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 painting would under the same conditions, if you willed it to.
Some of the most striking insights come from Sciolino’s exploration of overlooked sectors of the museum, including Persian and Islamic art, as well as women and women artists and queer subjects. So far, she has been the Louvre’s champion, even telling us what other Parisian amusements we can do when it’s closed on Tuesdays, or gushing over its outpost, the Louvre-Lens, under the heading “Museum with a Conscience.” She is uncharacteristically critical, however, of the Louvre’s display of the Musées Nationaux Récupération (MNR) collection comprising Nazi-looted items whose owners have yet to be identified, relegated to a small room in the Richelieu wing, with some deemed important enough to be scattered throughout the main collection. They are often delineated only by a small “MNR” label on their plaques. Both the display, 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.”
For art historians, the making of this book may be the most interesting thing about it. In an episode of The Art Angle podcast, Sciolino revealed that she insisted on publishing independently, despite the Louvre initially suggesting it go through their official publisher. In granting access, she said, the museum also required every interview to be monitored by a chaperone. Sciolino argues that covering the Louvre was more challenging than her previous reporting on the CIA in Washington, so impenetrable was its bureaucracy. It is curious, then, that her account is so in its pocket. Has the access been at the expense of critical faculty? One wonders if “the World’s Greatest Museum” was appended to the title at the Louvre’s request. The book reads more like a travel guide — even the final chapter recommends physically which way to turn for an optimum visit — than the impartial reporting of a journalist.
Yes, I have relentlessly scoffed at this book; it is clearly not for me, who views the concept of “beauty” entirely moot when looking at and enjoying art, and cringed every time an artwork was described as “seductive.” It was consciously written for people who are new to art and want a “way in,” which is itself a valid pursuit. However, if that way in is so dependent on superficiality and populist fluff, who is this book really serving: newcomers with a desire to engage with art history, or the Louvre’s visitor figures and status?
Adventures in the Louvre: How to Fall in Love with the World’s Greatest Museum (2025) by Elaine Sciolino is published by Norton and is available online and through independent booksellers.