Laurent Le Bon will be able to sketch a frank smile: he is appointed president of the Center Pompidou. Despite his repeated denials, he found it hard to hide the fact that he had coveted the job for years. Undoubtedly since his arrival in 2000 at the National Museum of Modern Art as curator. He had accepted, willy-nilly, to lead the association foreshadowing the Center Pompidou-Metz in 2009 before leading this branch of the Center from 2010 to 2012, hoping to succeed Alfred Pacquement as director of the museum in 2013.
Alain Seban, the president of the Center at the time, even left him to believe that he was the best candidate for the post. But things did not go as he hoped. After the withdrawal of the candidacy of Max Hollein (since left for the MET in New York) and the proposal of candidacy in duo in Catherine Grenier, it is finally a second knife, Bernard Blistène who was chosen.
Since this episode from which he had emerged bruised, he had partly consoled himself by taking the direction of the National Picasso Museum in 2013, while keeping an eye, this time on the presidency of the Center. His name was circulating to replace Jean-Luc Martinez at the head of the Louvre, but to tell the truth, bistro forecasts bet on him as soon as an important position becomes available.
Because Laurent Le Bon is one of the rare curators and art historians to have managerial skills. He even started his university career at Science Po Paris before going to the Louvre School and then passing the competition for the National Heritage Institute. The number of exhibition curatorships to his credit is impressive and we can no longer count the commissions, juries, conferences and other cultural bodies to which he has been invited.
The last straight line to the presidency had been very trying, and he had railed, not without reason, about this inability of the senior administration in France to keep the proceedings in progress secret.
As Serge Lasvignes’ mandate ends on June 28, Laurent Le Bon should take office very quickly. The files on his desk are numerous. First, to manage the tragicomedy around the appointment of Bernard Blistène to the artistic direction of the branch of the Center Pompidou in Brussels (Kanal-Brussels). At 66, the future ex-director of MNAM thought that his election to Kanal would pass like a letter to the Post Office. It is not, and the passage in force of the board of directors vis-a-vis the decision of the jury will leave traces.
Second file: find a replacement for Bernard Blistène. It will not be too difficult, as the record of the former director of the museums of Marseille lacks consistency. In addition, there is no lack of (necessarily) female and high-quality applications: Cécile Debray, Catherine Grenier, Emma Lavigne, Christine Macel, Camille Morineau …
And then we will have to prepare for the closure of the Center for works, breathe new life into the museum when it reopens, find a solution to the lack of space, manage the branches around the world … This false dilettante will be able to put his talent to work. of a mission at its height.
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