Fears for Mona Lisa over tour plans
Not in the best state for an Uber ride
Tourists throng to the Louvre in Paris to see the Mona Lisa, but she may soon be taken on a “grand tour” of France to allow people in deprived areas to view her enigmatic smile.
Francoise Nyssen, the Culture Minister, is “seriously considering” sending the painting to Lens, a former mining town in the north where the Louvre has an outpost.
She dismissed art experts’ warnings that Leonardo da Vinci’s
16th-century masterpiece is too fragile to be transported.
“We had the same reaction when we proposed to take the Bayeux Tapestry out of its museum,” she said yesterday.
French President Emmanuel Macron has offered to lend Britain the
11th-century embroidery of the Norman conquest.
Lens mayor Sylvain Robert is leading a campaign for the Mona Lisa to be exhibited temporarily at the LouvreLens, which is overlooked by slag heaps beside red-brick terraced houses and a chip shop.
Supporters of the local football club held up a huge banner with a picture of the Mona Lisa at a match last month, with a slogan reading: “Mona Lisa, the hearts of the people of Lens are beating for you.”
Many townspeople hope that struggling local businesses will benefit from visitors who come to see the work. Nyssen said: “Cultural offerings exist. Why would they be confined to certain places and not accessible everywhere for all to enjoy?”
She also said care would be taken to preserve the prize exhibit.
Didier Rykner, an art historian, said it would be “irresponsible and extremely dangerous” to subject it to further travel. “It is extremely fragile. The wood panel it is painted on is extremely thin and there is a crack, which if it widened would damage it irreversibly.”
The painting has not been seen outside the Louvre since 1974, when it was displayed in Tokyo and a woman tried to spray it with red paint. Luckily, it was protected by its bulletproof enclosure. A New Jersey man who got drunk in West Virginia and mistakenly ordered a US$1635 ($2250) Uber ride back to his home state says the experience was “crazy”.
NJ.com reported this week that Kenny Bachman thought he was taking an Uber to where he was staying, near the West Virginia University campus.
But when his driver woke him up two hours into the more than 500km journey to New Jersey, Bachman says he didn’t know what was happening or who the driver was.
The trip was made more expensive because Bachman gave the driver money for tolls and ordered an UberXL, which can hold up to six passengers.
He says he unsuccessfully challenged the fare with Uber, which confirmed that the ride occurred.
Bachman says he gave the driver five stars. AP