The Louvre in Paris welcomed a record 10.2 million visitors in 2018 and the museum has paid tribute to Beyonce and Jay-Z for their role in the visitor boost. Museum director Jean-Luc Martinex also credited the opening of Louvre Abu Dhabi for its role in attracting new visitors.
Celebrity power couple Jay-Z and Beyonce shot their six-minute 'Apes**t' video in the halls of the French museum last year. The clip quickly went viral, clocking up over 147 million views on YouTube.
Beside some of the museum's most iconic artworks including Théodore Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa and Marie-Guillemine Benoist's Portrait of a Black Woman, the Carters frolicked with a troupe of dancers through the deserted halls and galleries. The pair even replicated their oft-memed picture in front of Da Vinci's Mona Lisa.
In an interview with a French radio station, the museum director Martinex thanked the pop-duo saying: “The Beyonce video, like the opening of the Louvre museum in Abu Dhabi, ensured that the Louvre was talked about across the world, and one of the consequences of that is the spectacular rise in visitor numbers last year.”
Since the couple’s visit, the museum has launched a special Jay-Z and Beyonce at the Louvre video trail, which guides guests around the museum based on the art shown in the music video.
The 10.2 million people who came to the museum in 2018 marked a 25 per cent rise in visitors, beating the previous record of 2012 when 9.7 million visits were recorded. Major exhibitions, including a retrospective of the 19th-century artist Eugene Delacroix, also played a role in attracting visitors.
Despite its grand age of 227 years, the museum continues to attract a younger clientele with over 50 per cent of visitors recorded in 2018 being under 30 years old.
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