For the first time in its history, the Louvre will be run by a woman.
For the sake of parity expressed at least since 2013 by successive governments?
Certainly.
But also as a logical consequence of a brilliant career.
To read also: Laurence des Cars: "Orsay needs exceptional support from the State"
General curator of heritage, Laurence des Cars (born in 1966) still chairs the Musée d'Orsay with that of the Orangerie, the two most important collections in the world devoted to Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. She has been in charge of it since March 2017. Her transfer, announced on Monday, May 26, but which will not be effective until September 1 (Jean-Luc Martinez and she will work in pairs for the next few weeks to ensure a smooth transition), recalls the career of his mentor Henri Loyrette, who had already piloted Orsay before the Louvre.
It was under his mandate that this granddaughter of the novelist Guy des Cars, daughter of the journalist and writer Jean des Cars, who became a specialist in 19th century art, had taken her first professional steps.
As curator at the Musée d'Orsay from 1994 to 2007, she had signed several important retrospectives, including Édouard Vuillard (seen in Washington, Montreal, at the Grand Palais and at the Royal Academy in London);
Gustave Courbet (Grand Palais, Met de New York, Montpellier) or Jean-Léon Gérôme (Los Angeles, Orsay, Madrid).
Read also: Gustave Courbet, two hundred years old and not a wrinkle
She then joined Agence France-muséums, in charge of acquiring works for the Louvre Abu Dhabi from 2007 to 2014. The exhibition Louvre Abu Dhabi birth of a museum (at the Louvre then in Abu Dhabi) made it possible to admire the result of his action.
Back on the banks of the Seine, she first took the reins of the Orangerie from 2014 to 2017, at the same time mounting the audacious
Sade
exhibition
.
Attack the sun
in Orsay;
then at the Orangerie paying homage to Apollinaire as an art critic as well as a poet.
Then she had taken over the captaincy of the flagship, succeeding Guy Cogeval who had already considerably broadened and modernized the subject in these places, while succeeding in further enriching the collections.
Read also: The great maneuvers of Guy Cogeval
The Origins of the World
exhibitions followed
. The invention of nature in the 19th century
(currently in progress),
The black model
. From Géricault to Matisse (2019), Degas at the Opera (2019-2020), Berthe Morisot (2019),
Picasso. Bleu et rose
(2018-2019) in Orsay,
Félix Fénéon
(2019) and Water Lilies.
American abstraction and the last Monet (2018) at the Orangerie.
So much flawlessness, alternating beauty and scientific rigor, exceptional loans, discoveries and sure values, issues in line with the times and great popular successes.
In Orsay, the door was also widely opened to contemporary creators: Marlene Dumas, Laurent Grasso, Yan Pei-Ming, Glenn Ligon, Julian Schnabel, Tracey Emin, Maylis de Kerangal, the directors, artists Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota, Isabella Rossellini , Abd Al Malik.
The productions with major institutions have also multiplied - Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris Opera, reception of the Berlin Philharmonic, the Orchester de Paris in the nave, creation of the Académie Orsay-Royaumont…
Notable acquisitions
In March 2019, Laurence des Cars launched a vast transformation project called “Orsay Grand Open”, supported in particular by an American donation of twenty million euros. The aim is to give as much space as possible to the collections within the old station. At the start of 2024, the Research and Resources Center should therefore move to 29, quai Voltaire. And in the direction of a better reception and experience of visit will be created an artistic education center on more than 600 m². Finally, the opening of a new wing will allow a more fluid course. The future presentation of the first (2016) and the second Spencer and Marlene Hays donation signed in July 2019, will also be part of this Orsay Grand Open project and will enrich the venue with more than 293 works.
Read also: Matisse, Bonnard, Delaunay, Modigliani ... The fabulous donation to the Musée d'Orsay
Already, the recent new rooms devoted to Post-Impressionism inaugurated in 2018 (Françoise Cachin gallery), the creation of a new temporary exhibition space, the renovation of the rooms at the end of the nave and the Decorative Arts rooms foreshadow this redeployment, initiated by the next fall. During the four years of Laurence des Cars' presidency at the Orsay / Orangerie public establishment, several remarkable acquisitions took place, including
Chapeau rouge
by Paul Gauguin (1886),
Le Pardon
(1888) and
Self-portrait in the painting Baigneuses à la vache rouge
(around 1889) by Émile Bernard,
Haystacks III
by Piet Mondrian,
Portrait of Apollinaire
(1908-1909) by Marie Laurencin,
Le grand noir pic
(1894) by Gallen Kallela,
Le Christ vert
by Maurice Denis or even
Head of a young man from the self-portrait of Filippino Lippi
(1853) by Édouard Manet.
Digital development
In addition, the development of digital content, which the pandemic has made all the more necessary, was from the outset one of its priority policies.
At the launch of the # regardsnumériques program through which researchers, historians (The digital worlds of Orsay by Pierre Singaravélou), artists, designers (
UneOeuvreUnRegard
, the Instagram residency of Jean-Philippe Delhomme) offer their unique vision of the collections, has been added the new series of audiovisual creations around the performing arts #OrsayLive (from Christophe Chassol to Pablo Heras-Casado and the Orchester de Paris) and which will continue in the fall with in particular the recording of the show by choreographer François Chaignaud in the Nymphéas de l'Orangerie. The new websites of the two museums will also be launched in mid-June 2021. In 2019, the Orsay and Orangerie museums experienced record attendance with more than 3,600,000 visitors for one and more than a million for the other.