Exploring beauty across history: L’Oréal and Louvre launch art and beauty experience

The Louvre Museum, in collaboration with the L’Oréal Groupe, is launching a program that explores the concept of beauty across 100,000 years of art and history. The “Of All Beauties” initiative offers visitors a guided tour of 108 selected works, highlighting beauty rituals, ideals and societal changes.

“Humanity has always had a thirst for both art and beauty. Art is the first witness to the human quest for beauty,” Delphine Urbach, director of Art, Culture and Heritage at L’Oréal says.

Starting on November 13, Louvre visitors can explore themes related to beauty gestures, ancient rituals and changing beauty standards. The program aims to connect art history and beauty, showing how societies have interpreted beauty over time. The partnership seeks to make art more accessible, especially for younger audiences.

Exploring beauty history

The museum displays QR codes so visitors can access a web app and enhance their experience. Louvre says it is its first time offering a tour through the web app, which includes audio and written narratives presented by the artworks in the first person.

“It is the work or object that speaks and the keys to understanding are very accessible. The narration is embodied,” says Gautier Verbeke, director of Mediation and Audience Development at the Louvre Museum.

Verbeke explains that beauty has been and will stay very relevant. “It happens that beauty, its practices, gestures and canons, is the number one topic of conversation on social media today. It’s a very popular subject, and through it, we reach an audience that doesn’t naturally turn to the museum, a younger audience.”

The Louvre and L’Oréal will launch a co-hosted web series early in 2025, aiming to attract younger audiences by showcasing artworks through the eyes of young visitors. This launch is part of L’Oréal’s goal to make beauty more accessible.

“Our goal is to make beauty accessible to all and the Louvre’s collections provide a platform to explore beauty’s role throughout history,” says L’Oréal CEO Nicolas Hieronimus.

L’Oréal and the Louvre team up on beauty history partnership.The partnership highlights a shared vision between the Louvre and L’Oréal to celebrate the diversity of beauty across cultures and periods. The two hope to create a museum experience that resonates with today’s audiences by combining art with technology.

Culture and beauty

Leveraging art for personal care experiences also extends to dsm-firmenich. The company is presenting the “Imagine Sensorium” exhibition by collaborating with the artist collective Future Bedouin, which crafts bold installations inspired by the Arabic landscape and local Arabic cultures. 

The exhibition uses different artistic mediums and will be presented in the Perfume House at the Al Shindagha Museum, the UAE’s largest open-air heritage museum. The installation is open to the public from October 28 to November 24.