Displaying items by tag: minister of culture

The French minister of Culture, Fleur Pellerin, has announced that artist Jean-Marc Bustamante will succeed Nicolas Bourriaud as the new director of the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Bustamante will take up the position in October.

The announcement comes after a media scandal surrounding the dismissal of Bourriaud from the post which he has held since 2011, and puts an end to months of speculations and public accusations, including rumors of nepotism set off by the satirical weekly, Le Canard Enchaîné.

Last week, the French Minister of Culture Fleur Pellerin dismissed Nicolas Bourriaud from his post as director of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, in a surprise decision that sent the French—and international—media into a frenzy, sparking rumors regarding possible ulterior motives.  

In a public back-and-forth carried out in the French press, Bourriaud challenged Pellerin's decision to fire him, calling it "arbitrary."

The Palace of Fontainebleau, a royal château that served as the residence of French monarchs from Louis VII through Napoleon III, is preparing for a major overhaul. Located just fifty-five kilometers southeast of Paris, the sprawling palace has long been overshadowed by its more famous counterpart, Versailles. France’s Minister of Culture, Fleur Pellerin, is hoping that a €115-million funding boost will change that. Versailles, which embarked on its own €350-million, seventeen-year overhaul in 2003, is the only other royal home in France to have received public funding of a similar caliber.

Announced on Monday, January 26, 2015, the plan to overhaul Fontainebleau includes the long-term conservation of the palace, which was added to UNESCO’s World Heritage list in 1981.

Five architectural firms are on the shortlist to design the Louvre’s new storage facility, planned to open near the museum’s satellite in Lens, northern France. Corinne Vezzoni & Assoc and Zig Zag architecture, both from France, Neutelings Riedijk Architecten from the Netherlands, Roger Stirk Harbour + Partners from the UK and Estudio Arquitectura Baeza from Spain were chosen from 173 applicants.

In September 2013, then-minister of culture Aurélie Filippetti announced that the Louvre would move works held in a basement storage area on the banks of the River Seine due to the risk of flooding.

The French President, François Hollande, yesterday, 26 August, named Fleur Pellerin as the new minister of culture in France’s reshuffled cabinet. She succeeds Aurélie Filippetti, who published an open letter of resignation in the newspaper Le Monde on Monday after a dramatic split in the French cabinet that emerged this weekend. Pellerin was the minister of foreign trade and tourism in the first government under Prime Minister Manuel Valls from April this year.

A rising political star, Pellerin previously served as the delegate for small and medium enterprises, innovation and the digital economy at the finance ministry.

The director of the Pompidou-Metz Laurent Le Bon has been appointed president of the Musée Picasso in Paris, which is due to reopen at the end of September after a five-year refurbishment. Le Bon succeeds to Anne Baldassari, who was dismissed last month due to her much-criticized management style.

After twelve years at the helm of the world’s busiest museum, Henri Loyrette announced that he will leave his post at the Musée du Louvre in April of 2013. Before becoming the president and director of the Louvre, Loyrette served as the first curator and then the director of Paris’ Musée d’Orsay from 1994 to 2001 and has served as France’s chief curator of heritage since 1975. Loyrette has already informed the president of France, François Hollande, and the country’s minister of culture of his departure.

The Louvre attracts more visitors each year than any other institution in the world and Loyrette has managed to keep that number on the rise. In fact, the number of visitors has almost doubled under Loyrette’s leadership; 5.1 million patrons were reported in 2001 and by the end of 2012, almost 10 million people will have visited the Louvre this year.

However, Loyrette did much more than increase attendance during his time at the Louvre. He is responsible for implementing the museum’s contemporary art program and has organized exhibitions by Cy Twombly (1928-2011), Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945), and many other renowned modern artists. Loyrette employed a new policy that relied on crowd-sourced fundraising and launched a number of successful public campaigns that asked art enthusiasts to help the museum make important acquisitions. Loyrette also oversaw the opening of the Louvre’s outpost in the northern city of Lens as well as the expansion of the museum’s Islamic art galleries, which opened earlier this year.

Loyrette will no longer be in charge when the Louvre’s outpost in Abu Dhabi opens. The controversial project stirred debate in the French art world as Abu Dhabi has paid nearly $1.3 billion to use the Louvre name for thirty years and to gain access to the museum’s collection during that time. Designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, the Abu Dhabi location is slated to open in 2015.