A separate ticket for the Mona Lisa room at the Louvre and criticism of museum management

So, let us take a close look at the decision of the Louvre's management to introduce a separate, though in fact additional, ticket for admission to the room with the "Mona Lisa". Judging by my own impressions as a visitor, based on five to seven visits to the Louvre every year, I can say the following.

1. Undoubtedly, what the director called a "blessing for the museum" concerns the financial question, for millions of people come to the Louvre to stand in the queue before the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace, to photograph themselves with them and leave. The rest of the collection suffers badly from the excessive popularity of these universal favourites, if only because of the constant crowds and the impossibility of viewing the works in peace. But the Victory is displayed on its own, on the staircase, where several hundred people in principle merely hinder movement to the other rooms, but do not prevent anyone from approaching the exhibits.

2. An additional ticket does not reduce the harm done by the photo-pilgrims to the Gioconda; it merely gives the museum additional income. It is quite likely that part of the funds will be redirected to preparing a separate space for the Gioconda, but the question is not the sources of funding, but the readiness for decisive action.

3. The museum has money enough even without additional tickets. Every centimetre of the Carrousel du Louvre has been commercialised beyond all bounds, and to the detriment of the core functions of supporting museum activity, from proper entrance halls and the necessary infrastructure to security and control zones.

4. The Louvre needs a serious review of its operations, not in its exhibition policy, but in the quality of work of its administrative staff and services. It is incompetent management, not the urge of millions of tourists to take a snap for Insta, that has become the threat to the cultural substance. Visitors, of every intellectual and cultural level, are one of the reasons museums exist, and museums are obliged to be able to ensure that their audience, any audience, even one from a primitive tribe, can engage with the museum's holdings. It should not fall to enraged aesthetes to drive off the savages with selfie sticks and battle-ready rucksacks, who lie down on the cases with the crown jewels and perch on the plinths of ancient sculpture. A museum must be organised so as to prevent this.

5. Forbid the Chinese, the Americans and whoever else from entering the galleries in puffer jackets and with enormous rucksacks, and, to begin with, build a proper cloakroom rather than a left-luggage office of a few hundred lockers, and this with ticket sales in the millions. As a result, people in full ski kit, all but carrying tents, whole delegations fresh from the slopes of Chomolungma, poor simpletons, push their way up to the masterpieces. Silly women with umbrellas, lunatics with Pilates mats, whole families in full winter ammunition like Napoleon's in the Russian campaign. And nobody stops them or suggests that they leave their cloaks and belongings in a special room.

6. Add attendants and guards. Why is it that at the Tretyakov Gallery every Vereshchagin has two little old ladies guarding it to make sure people photograph without a flash? Here, by contrast, a single autistic-seeming attendant strolls languidly through three or four enormous rooms with no desire to warn anyone against stepping over the barrier. I personally saw a portly Saxon family lean against the frame of Raphael's "Saint Margaret", to which the guard responded by waving at them from two kilometres away. If France has run out of labour resources, we can send a landing party under the Moscow Longevity programme. Install proper alarms so that the natives do not put their hands on Titian and Cariani; it is not so very difficult. Remove from the museum people who take their shoes off in the middle of an enfilade to change their socks, eat burgers and drink fizzy drinks. Open additional entrances and put a sufficient number of staff everywhere.

6. The museum can accommodate everyone who wishes to come, however impenetrably ignorant they may be, provided the staff are there in the necessary numbers and ready to work professionally, as happens in any normal museum in the world with adequate management. Short of experience? Visit the Hermitage.

7. The management of the Louvre as it stands does not meet the demands of the world community upon the museum, nor the serious challenges arising from those demands.