In an office on the ground floor of the Louvre, cluttered with books and papers, Henri Loyrette is rolling his eyes in exasperation. The museum's director has been denying accusations by detractors of cultural prostitution, populism and debasing the ideals of this most august of institutions.

Now he is focused on his latest project: the Louvre's participation in a Picasso exhibition that opened in Paris yesterday. Picasso and the Masters is set to be the blockbuster of the season in Europe, setting the Spanish painter alongside the works of the classical artists such as Goya, Velázquez and Delacroix, who influenced him. It has cost €4.3 million (£3.3 million) to put on, involves more than 200 paintings with a total estimated value of 2 billion and is spread across three Paris museums: the Grand Palais, the Musée d'Orsay and the Louvre.

Mr Loyrette says that the arrival of Picasso's works, amid permanent collections that range from antiquity to 1848, is part of a drive to renew the Louvre's historic vocation as a universal museum - but the exhibition is likely to fuel allegations that France's former royal palace is being dragged into what purists describe scornfully as mass culture.

They say that Mr Loyrette is turning his back on 200 years of history in an attempt to pull in visitors; for example, 8.3 million last year - 60 per cent more than in 2001.

“I do not think of culture in terms of quantity,” said Marc Fumaroli, chairman of the Society of Friends of the Louvre. He said that the masses drawn to the museum were “a cancer”. He added: “They visit the Louvre like they'd visit Chernobyl.”

Mr Loyrette, 56, rejected the criticism. The Louvre, set up as a museum in 1793 during the French Revolution, was never meant to be elitist, he said. “It was meant as a museum open to all.” In the eyes of his detractors, Mr Loyrette is guilty not only of throwing the Louvre's doors open to the masses but also of engaging in tacky projects.

This summer Becca Cason Thrash, a Texan socialite, raised £1.5 million for the museum with a dinner followed by a Duran Duran concert. Even worse for traditionalists is a deal for the Louvre to lend its name to a museum in Abu Dhabi in 2013; the Louvre of the Sands, as it has become known.

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