Louvre Attendants Strike After Vermeer Bottleneck

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/09/arts/design/vermeer-louvre.html

Version 0 of 1.

PARIS — Dozens of museum attendants at the Louvre went on strike on Thursday to protest what they said was the museum’s poor handling of crowds at a temporary exhibition dedicated to Vermeer, with another strike possible on Friday.

“Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting,” which includes 12 of the Dutch painter’s 34 known works, drew 9,400 people the first week after it opened on Feb. 22 — more than double the museum’s expectations — resulting in hourslong waits for some visitors. This week the museum put in place timed visits to the temporary shows on its online ticketing system, limiting the waiting time to 45 minutes.

But there have still been bottlenecks. “It’s been a big mess,” Françoise Pinson, the secretary general of a museum workers union, said of the situation, which prompted 70 to 80 of its members to strike. “The signage wasn’t good; the planning wasn’t good.”

On Friday morning, museum workers will meet to decide whether to continue their strike. Only 2 percent of the Louvre’s employees went on strike, and the museum was operating as usual, with temporary workers filling in, the museum said.

The Vermeer exhibition, which runs through May 22 and will travel to the National Gallery of Art in Washington this fall, argues that the Dutch master may not have been the solitary genius that some believe him to have been. Media attention, a small viewing space and the steady allure of Vermeer have resulted in crowds twice as large as those for several of the Louvre’s recent exhibitions, including ones devoted to Raphael and Ingres.

The Vermeer show is one of three temporary exhibitions that opened at the same time, along with “Masterpieces of the Leiden Collection: The Age of Rembrandt” and “Valentin de Boulogne: Beyond Caravaggio,” which was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art last year.

The shows have helped lift attendance at the Louvre, which had seen a striking drop in visitors since a spate of terrorist attacks in France. The Louvre had 7.4 million visitors in 2016, down from 8.6 million in 2015.

The Vermeer exhibition is on view in one of the underground spaces where many temporary exhibitions are held and that can accommodate only 250 people at a time, the Louvre said. After the crowds of the first week, attendance has dropped to around 4,000 people per week, the museum said.