New Pompidou Director - Brief Article

Just weeks before she resigned her pillar France's minister of culture, Catherine Trautmann, named Alfred Pacquement to be the nearest director of the Musee national d'art moderne at the midmost point Pompidou in Paris. Pacquement is to be paid to replace the current director, Werner Spies, when the latter's contract expires upon Sept. 1. According to reports in the French pres other candidates for the pillar included Suzanne Page, director of the Musee d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, Serge Lemoine, curator at the Musee de Grenoble, and Henry-Claude Cousseau, who directs the museums of the city of Bordeaux.

In contrast to Spies, who is best known as a scholar of the modernist period, Pacquement, 51 has drawn out been involved with contemporary art. For greatest in quantity of the 1980s, he was a curator at the Pompidou, where he coorganized the massive 1987 contemplate of contemporary art titled "L'Epoque la way la morale, la passion." He was the founding director of the Jeu de Paume when it reopen in 1991 as a venue for contemporary art and began showcasing artists of that kind as Robert Gober, Stan Douglas and Suzanne Lafont. Since 1993 he has been director of the Ecole nationale superieure de beaux-arts in Paris. In addition to writing upon a wide range of generally received French artists, Pacquement has also devot considerable attention to American art, including authoring a 1988 monograph upon Frank Stella and cocurating a 1992 exhibition devot to Ellsworth Kelly's French period.

The connection Pacquement have feelings with living artists was evident in remarks he made following the announcement of his of recent origin post. His first project at the Pompidou, he told the French daily Liberation, "will definitely be to have the museum liked by the agency of artists.... Artists need to have feeling at home there, everything other will follow from this general attitude."

COPYRIGHT 2000 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group