Since 1881, the Kore of Samos has stood in pale marble at the Louvre museum in Paris.
Headless and missing one arm, the statue has, over generations, become easy to overlook – a fragment of what was once a vividly painted offering dedicated in ancient Greece to the deity Hera.
What visitors see today is weathered white stone. What they do not see – and therefore for generations have not been able to appreciate – are the colours that originally covered it.
As of this week, that changes.
At the Louvre, visitors will be able to scan a QR code beside the statue and view a reconstruction of how scholars believe it once appeared, virtually restored with pigment and contextual detail through an augmented reality initiative developed in partnership with Snap Inc’s AR Studio Paris, founded in 2021.
The Kore is one of six works included in the programme, which layers research, translation and reconstruction directly onto the physical object through smartphones.
Rather than focusing on the museum’s most photographed icons, such as the Mona Lisa or Venus de Milo, the project highlights pieces often missed amid the crowds.
The move reflects a broader shift in how major institutions are thinking about their audiences. Nearly 44 per cent of the Louvre’s visitors are under the age of 26, according to Gautier Verbeke, the museum’s director of mediation and audience development.
“The Louvre is a young museum,” Verbeke tells The National. “To make art accessible to everyone, we need to be imaginative and adapt to the habits of our audiences.”
For Verbeke, the value of augmented reality lies in what it reveals. “It allows us to discover instinctively and immediately the silent parts of the works,” he says. “It may offer contextualisation, reveal original meaning or allow us to rediscover fragmentary works in their original form.”
The Kore offers one of the clearest visual examples. Through the AR layer, decades of conservation study are condensed into a viewable reconstruction that appears on screen within seconds.
“With the Kore of Samos, we worked from the Louvre’s archives – the fabrics, the pigments, what she was holding,” says Antoine Gilbert, manager of AR Studio Paris. “It became a reconstitution of everything scholars know about that type of statue, brought together on a single object.”
The process, he adds, involved sustained collaboration with curators to ensure that each digital layer reflected established research.
The same approach reshapes the experience of the bust of Akhenaten, whose elongated features define Egypt’s Amarna period.
Here, tonal variation that has faded over millennia is digitally reintroduced, offering a clearer sense of how the sculpture may have originally appeared.
Other works in the programme rely on different strengths of the technology. The Code of Hammurabi, a basalt stele inscribed with nearly 280 laws, can be decoded and contextualised through interactive overlays. Hans Holbein the Younger’s Portrait of Anne of Cleves reveals compositional and symbolic detail embedded in the Renaissance painting. A group of bronze figures known as The Four Captives is virtually repositioned within its original architectural setting, while a Renaissance ceramic basin by Bernard Palissy animates the reptiles and amphibians that populate its surface.
“The curators told us that visitors are often drawn to the more famous masterpieces, and in doing so they miss other very important works in the collection,” Gilbert says. “Augmented reality became a way to shed new light on those pieces.”
For Gilbert, the technology may do more than just bring more eyeballs to oft-ignored works. “Otherwise, visitors need to read long texts or consult multiple documents to learn more,” he says. “With augmented reality, all of that validated information can be brought together in less than a minute.”
The implications extend beyond Paris. Museums worldwide have experimented with immersive installations and digital scenography in recent years, while audiences increasingly consume information through layered, responsive interfaces. For the Louvre, the decision to permanently formalise augmented reality inside its galleries reflects a shift in how mediation is understood.
“At AR Studio Paris, our ambition is to support cultural institutions by inventing new forms of knowledge-sharing,” Gilbert says. “The idea is not to replace the object, but to help visitors reconnect with it.”
Verbeke frames the initiative in similar terms. “Augmented reality becomes a fully-fledged mediation tool,” he says. “It allows us to reveal what time has erased – colours, gestures, techniques – while respecting the scientific integrity of the artworks.”
While the technology is accessible for all, the generational ambition remains explicit. “To make our shared heritage even more accessible, we must be imaginative,” Verbeke says. “By bringing millennia-old masterpieces into dialogue with the most innovative technologies, the museum affirms a responsible approach to cultural transmission.”
In the UAE, Louvre Abu Dhabi operates within a similarly global framework. Its galleries already prioritise cross-cultural narratives and contextual storytelling - and has begun using virtual reality technology to bring that to life. As institutions in the Gulf continue to expand, the question is how they will be integrated m
Gilbert confirms that the conversation is continuing. “We are working with different cultural institutions in the Middle East,” he says. “This landscape is booming.” While he stops short of announcing specific collaborations, the implication is clear: the experiment unfolding in Paris may not remain confined there.
Debate about screens in museum spaces is unlikely to disappear. For some, the presence of a smartphone risks shortening attention. For others, it offers a bridge into material that might otherwise feel distant. The Louvre’s approach positions augmented reality as a layer that deepens engagement rather than competes with it.
“For us, it’s about helping people understand in a glance what might otherwise require much longer explanation,” Gilbert says. “All the validated information can be brought together very quickly.”
As museums in Paris, Abu Dhabi and beyond consider how to serve audiences shaped by digital culture, the Louvre’s latest initiative suggests that adaptation can sit comfortably alongside scholarship. The tools may be contemporary. The material remains timeless – and perhaps more engaging to new generations than ever before.
