The Louvre heist didn’t unfold like a crime; it played out like the season finale of a heist show, and the public reacted accordingly, illustrating the evolving relationship between the public and institutions of power.
On Oct. 19, 2025, the first Louvre robbery of the 21st century occurred. Jewels worth approximately 88 million euros were stolen by a group of amateur thieves. However, what was even more fascinating than the Ocean’s Eleven-style audacity of the heist, pulled off in an era of advanced surveillance, was the public’s reaction: a mix of amusement, applause for the thieves and the internet’s characteristically flippant treatment of what is, in essence, a cultural loss.
I’ll admit, I also laughed at the skits mocking the supposedly clueless guards and museum officials who “let” the robbery unfold in a busy exhibition hall in broad daylight. Then I realized how unserious we make this all look: some silly guards and silly museum officials were tricked by the amateur robbers, and now silly police officers are running around Paris trying to catch them.
Compared with how the public reacted to the 1911 Mona Lisa theft — with grief and anger — we do not treat this event half as seriously. There are two reasons for this: the glorification of crimes and criminals, and people’s disconnect from the elitist institutions.
The former has been the subject of heated public discussions for a while now. The so-called cultural phenomenon caused by the omnipresence of information on the internet: people sympathize with the criminals because they find their reasons compelling, or, even more morally ambiguous, physically attractive. It’s gotten to the point that convicted murderers get TikTok fan accounts and a community of people trying to appeal their sentence. No wonder that something much lighter than a murder — a tiny 88 million euro heist — would receive its own share of fans.
The cherry on the top is the surge in heist-themed media over the past two decades, like the aforementioned Ocean’s Eleven or Money Heist (La Casa de Papel) that romanticize these crimes. Now, as we can receive updates about every single detail of this case without standing up from the couch, our brain reasonably treats it as a form of entertainment. Once crime becomes a pop-culture motif, it doesn’t take much for the museum, rather than the thief, to become the punchline. Yet there is one additional component needed for the “pillar of cultural heritage” to become a joke: the people’s disillusionment with elitist institutions.
Public trust in cultural institutions has been eroding for years, and museums have not been spared. Once seen as guardians of collective heritage, they are now increasingly viewed as elitist spaces that hoard culture rather than share it. Add to that the growing awareness that many celebrated artifacts were acquired through colonial exploitation, theft or questionable deals, and the moral authority of museums begins to crack.
With renewed attention on the Louvre heist, a related story resurfaced online: Kim Kardashian’s role in helping recover stolen artifacts, including the 2018 case of the Nedjemankh coffin that illegally ended up in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. It became part of a wider discussion on museums’ colonial past and their acquisition of artifacts through force or pillage. “How can we feel bad for the museum being robbed if it acquired some of its artifacts by the same means?” has become a recurring question surrounding the Louvre heist.
This heist revealed a paradox at the heart of our cultural moment. That is the uncomfortable truth beneath the memes, jokes and TikToks: it was fun to watch because it felt like the powerful were being humbled. If museums want the public to see a theft as a collective loss rather than a thrilling spectacle, they may need to confront the histories and hierarchies that have alienated so many.
Contact the editors responsible for this article: Caitlin Donovan, Avery Finley
