Longtime Louvre director Henri Loyrette to step down

Henri Loyrette, the pioneering boss of the Louvre for over a decade, will quit the world’s biggest museum at the end of his current term of office in April, he told AFP on Monday.

Loyrette, 60, has been at the helm of the Paris institution since 2001, having previously been in charge of the world’s most important collection of impressionist art at the Musee d’Orsay.

He will leave the Louvre in good shape with visitor numbers, running at 5 million per year when he took over, expected to top 10 million this year with half of them composed of the under-30s.