The Louvre is considering legal action against Marine Le Pen after the far-right French presidential hopeful filmed a campaign video outside the museum. Emmanuel Macron had used the backdrop of the Paris institution’s glass pyramid for his victory speech in 2017; now Le Pen, ahead of the April election, returned to the venue to highlight what she claimed was Macron’s failure to deliver on promises made that day.
Posting the video on social media accounts, Le Pen wrote: ‘Collapse of the country, downgrading of the French: it was at the Louvre that Emmanuel Macron’s five-year term began.’
The Louvre has hit out at the video however saying the online film was made ‘without any authorisation from the museum, in violation of the rules of law applicable to public property and intellectual property.’ Le Pen’s National Rally (FN) party say that because the video is not of a commercial nature, no permission was required. A spokesperson told The Times that the museum was scared of antagonising the Macron camp.
Le Pen is seeking to soften her image as she faces a four-way race including Macron, centre-right Valerie Pecresse and the aggressively anti-Islam platform of Éric Zemmour.
In 2015 Le Pen attacked France’s Regional Contemporary Art Fund (FRAC) system, telling artists that ‘we want to break with the current logic of the FRAC that too often promotes commercial interests, forgetting the actual artistic creation’ – with one FN candidate, Sébastien Chenu, adding however: ‘If a place wants to do an exhibition on migrants, we will not pay one euro for this event’.
