The symbol is important: after more than one hundred and fifty years of male direction, the National School of Fine Arts in Paris welcomes a director. Appointed by the Minister of Culture, Alexia Fabre, current director of the MAC VAL (museum of contemporary art of Val-de-Marne), takes over from Jean de Loisy, whose mandate expired on January 2. In a difficult institution, at the heart of controversy during the #MeToo movement in 2018 and in which an investigation was carried out around gender equality, his appointment is a sign in favor of parity.
Demanding space
Head curator of heritage, Alexia Fabre first directed the departmental museum of Gap from 1993 to 1998 before carrying out, in 1998, the innovative project of the 13,000 square meters of MAC VAL, in Vitry-sur-Seine. Of Basque origin, the daughter of a pianist, the curator is a graduate of the Ecole du Louvre and the National Heritage Institute. Passionate about classical music through her family, rock through her personal tastes and fond of Manet and Goya, Alexia Fabre arrived in contemporary art “a bit by chance” as she confided to New Obs in 2009. From the MAC VAL, open since 2005 and dependent on the cultural policy of the department, she has made, with her collaborator Frank Lamy, a meeting place and a demanding space for contemporary creation, with temporary exhibitions by François Morellet, Ange Leccia, Christian Boltanski, Tania Mouraud, Esther Ferrer or Nil Yalter.
Procurement Policy
Renewing the hanging of the permanent collection with a larger proportion of female artists recently, it has also led an acquisition policy in favor of the latter from French galleries (Annette Messager, Tatiana oublie, Valérie Jouve, Charlotte Moth, etc.) Still with Frank Lamy, she was artistic co-director of Nuit Blanche in 2009 and 2011 and participated in the Grand Paris Express committee of experts for the artistic direction of Val-de-Marne stations. In 2019, she was co-curator of the exhibition “Moon, from real travel to imaginary travel” at the Grand Palais, Réunion des Musées Nationaux.
At the head of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, she will have to carry out major building works in a place already strained by the lack of space, while fighting against discrimination and working on gender equality and the diversity. According to the press release from the Ministry of Culture, “his project for the school is unifying in terms of pedagogy and research and displays a real ambition for national and international partnerships, artistic programming and collection management”.