She had been found tired, on May 19, at 9:30 am, when the Musée d'Orsay reopened, after six months of closure of cultural venues. Happy, with shining eyes to finally welcome the public - "We now know that we are really made to live together, we human beings", she joked, but the features drawn, stressed. It is because Laurence des Cars, who has just been appointed president of the Louvre, becoming the first woman to occupy this position, at 54 years old, as of September 1, as she herself announced to France Inter in his morning this Wednesday, May 26, had undoubtedly a lot of emotions and projects to manage, in his mind both very serious and offbeat.
She is an affable, funny, and reserved woman, if all that is possible at the same time. His friends, his colleagues have a greedy smile when they evoke his gift of imitating politicians or personalities. We asked her for at least one excerpt, a voice signature one day, to enjoy it once, we almost begged, and she declined with a smile: you don't do that in front of a journalist. Just as she had politely refused our request for a meeting for a large portrait, when she was appointed to the Musée d'Orsay in 2017. Her predecessor Guy Cogeval, much more social and a little pooch, had rushed into the room. 'exercise, him. We know and yet we have a feeling that Laurence des Cars, who succeeds Jean-Luc Martinez, in office for eight years at the Louvre, and who did not obtain the final three-year mandate that he hoped for,has a rather romantic story beyond his immense scientific knowledge, far beyond his specialization in painting of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth.
Stick to time and its struggles
Cars, this name has long spoken to the oldest. His grandfather Guy des Cars was the author of countless best-sellers, not a writer to enter the Pleiade but to be read by the general public, he who produced almost a novel by one from 1941 to 1991, for half a century. We would have liked to hear the art historian talk about this great figure who had chosen easy literature rather than the ultra-sharp academic knowledge of his granddaughter. She could not hide from us her father, Jean des Cars, 78, a very funny man, crossed paths with her on the evening of an official opening of the great Picasso exhibition in Orsay, great journalist of Match au Figaro and Days of France, author of historical biographies, often devoted to queens and princesses, from Sissi to Grace of Monaco. This evening of 2018,the crystalline and almost childish laughter of Laurence des Cars, savoring her father's jokes with us, suggested how much she was his princess. Isn't her full name Laurence Elisabeth de Pérusse des Cars? Secret garden, private collection of memories, obviously. Of her personal life either, she does not even need to specify that it concerns her. She sometimes knows how to establish a sympathetic distance, which is a little tour de force.She sometimes knows how to establish a sympathetic distance, which is a little tour de force.She sometimes knows how to establish a sympathetic distance, which is a little tour de force.
Laurence des Cars has always been a huge worker and, fundamentally, nothing should exceed, if not serve culture, its mission at the service of the public, and highlight the work on the works. And the will to stick to its time, to its struggles. One of his most notable exhibitions at Orsay was “The Black Model”, very ambitious, which traced the genealogy of the appearance of color models in painting, but also hidden stories of misery, slavery and of underground tragedies. She had invited rapper Abd al Malik to build with her, among others, the course of this reappropriation and to perform inside the museum. It is also a woman who put others forward. When she was appointed to Orsay, after having managed the Musée de l'Orangerie which is attached to her,it was Cécile Debray who replaced her at the head of Monet's Nymphéas Palace in the Tuileries Gardens. Her number two, in Orsay, is also a woman, Sylvie Patry, whom she brought back from the United States where the latter held a prestigious position.
A career led by a master
His career, compared to his family line, appears haughty, unique, masterfully led.
A specialist in painting, she was not confined to the perimeter of the Impressionists.
Her most significant exhibition, which was a huge success, when she was directing the Orangery, was devoted to American social painting of the 1930s. Iconic paintings in the United States and around the world, and that we do not had hardly ever seen in France.
Previously, Laurence des Cars was one of those who set up the Louvre… Abu Dhabi.
In 2007, she was appointed director of the France Muséums agency, which steers the project.
She surrounds herself with young curators, several of whom now run major Parisian museums.
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His arrival at the Louvre therefore seems logical and was scheduled ... in three years. A few months ago, no one thought that Jean-Luc Martinez, boss of the largest museum in the world for eight years, would not be renewed for the last term he requested. And then there were various controversies, large grains of sand in the machine, which perhaps made Emmanuel Macron want to look elsewhere. And to name a woman, while France finally hopes to emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic which has brought museums to the ground. Laurence des Cars was not a candidate, it was said, which is often the best way to be elected. She knows Jean-Luc Martinez very well, with whom the transition will go smoothly, by September 1, when the museums are waking up from a long sleep. And that Orsay, the other French star of the genre,therefore also expects his next queen… or king.