Théodore Steeg responsible for Posts and Telegraphs. In 1907 he was appointed the rapporteur on the Public Education budget. Théodore Steeg was appointed Minister of Public Instruction and Beaux-Arts in Ernest Monis's cabinet on 2 March 1911. The Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre on 21 August 1911, and Steeg was forced to start an administrative inquiry into how such an important painting could have been stolen from such a major museum. Steeg was a supporter of the Nouvelle Sorbonne movement with its insistence on basic republican principles. He rejected a petition to revise the Sorbonne reforms of 1902, to which
Louvre building was occupied by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres and the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, which in 1699 held the first of a series of salons. The Académie remained at the Louvre for 100 years. During the French Revolution, the National Assembly decreed that the Louvre should be used as a museum to display the nation's masterpieces. The museum opened on 10 August 1793 with an exhibition of 537 paintings, the majority of the works being royal and confiscated church property. Because of structural problems with the building, the museum was closed in 1796 until 1801.