
Influential dance company bred culture of sex, silence, dancers say
PARIS — The Louvre museum in Paris reopened to the public Wednesday after being shut down for a day when workers complaining about overcrowding walked out.
Union representatives met Wednesday morning with management to discuss how to ease the traffic flow at the world’s most visited museum. They decided to reopen the museum at 11 a.m., some two hours after its regular opening time.
Hundreds of frustrated tourists, who had been waiting several hours in line Wednesday, expressed relief that they would be allowed into one of the world’s most famous museums.
Lauren Berry, a 24-year old tourist from Oxford, Mississippi, said that she and her family had already been turned away from the Louvre on Monday but came back on Wednesday in hopes that it would reopen. The museum is closed on Tuesdays.
“We had planned our entire trip around coming to the Louvre because we are huge art lovers,” Berry said.
Union representatives say renovation work around the “Mona Lisa,” the museum’s most famous painting, has led to organizational problems, huge queues and the harassment of staff by frustrated tourists.
“The staff can’t work in these conditions. Tourists are being aggressive to employees near the “Mona Lisa” because they are being squeezed” into a small space, Pierre Zinenberg, a Louvre employee and union representative, told The Associated Press.
Unions note that staff numbers have dropped over the past decade even though the number of visitors to the Louvre has risen 20%.
Photos: Remembering famed architect I.M. Pei, dead at 102
Sustain our coverage of culture, arts and literature.
Influential dance company bred culture of sex, silence, dancers say
Profile in Courage awards honor commitments to protecting democracy
Cancer survivor and amputee defies the odds running marathons and breaking records
Manchester City captures Premier League title
Kate McKinnon, Pete Davidson among several ‘SNL’ cast members exiting the show
MerleFest celebrates music from the Appalachian region and boosts the local economy
New exhibit chronicles work of late painter Barkley Hendricks and his use of the camera
Five years after taking its last bow, Ringling Bros. is back – this time, without animals
Young playwrights use the theater to confront the trauma of gun violence
Ukrainian band Kalush Orchestra wins Eurovision with a show of support for a nation gripped by war