Xavier Rey is appointed director of the Centre Pompidou

On the proposal of Laurent Le Bon, President of the Centre Pompidou, Roselyne Bachelot- Narquin, Minister for Culture, has appointed Xavier Rey as Director of the Musée national d’art moderne.

This nomination closes the public candidacy procedure established with the constitution of a jury.

Laurent Le Bon is delighted by the arrival of Xavier Rey at the head of the Musée national d’art moderne : “His dynamism, goodwill, experience on the ground and his openness to the arts, combined with his managerial skills, will be essential in order to conduct the Centre Pompidou’s new project successfully.”

Xavier Rey’s role will include defining the museum’s scientific and cultural project that will guide the forthcoming major work, in dialogue with the components of the Centre Pompidou (Bpi, Ircam and the Culture and Creation Department) and all the managerial teams. To achieve this, one of his first missions will be to lead projects that are experimental and innovative in terms of museography, cultural offer and partnerships and which build on the Centre Pompidou’s heritage of innovation and multi-disciplinarity. Based on the generosity that he intends to make the guiding principle of the National Museum of Modern Art, Xavier Rey’s project aims to make it an institution and a collection that are increasingly focused on serving the territory and the public as a whole.

Xavier Rey will take up position on 1 October 2021.

Xavier Rey, formerly a student at the École Normale Supérieure, a graduate of HEC and a curator trained in the Institut National du Patrimoine (National Heritage Institute), began his career at the Musée d’Orsay following work on the history of late 18th and 19th century art. He became director of the museum’s collections and oversaw its territorial policy. Having co-curated many exhibitions, including “Les portraits de Cézanne” (Portraits of Cézanne) in 2017, that same year he was appointed director of Musée de Marseille, which groups together nineteen sites with a collection of more than 120 000 artworks.

He has programmed ambitious exhibitions such as “Picasso, Voyages imaginaires” (Picasso, Imaginary Voyages), “Chefs d’oeuvre de la collection Burrell” (Masterpieces of the Burrell collection, Musée Cantini),”Man Ray et la mode” (Man Ray and Fashion, Musée Cantini & Château Borely) and “Cinq” (Five) by Sophie Calle. In 2019, he designed the “Par hasard” (By Chance) exhibition, the first project shared by all Musée de Marseille. He organised the 2021 summer season with the exhibitions entitled “Le Surréalisme dans l’art américain” (Surrealism in American Art) and “Jawlensky, la promesse du visage” (Jawlensky, the promise of a face). Xavier Rey is ever attentive to the social role of museums and has conducted many operations targeting disadvantaged demographics, earning the 2020 “Osez le Musée” (Dare the Museum) prize for the Musée de Marseille. He has committed himself to the rehabilitation of the Musée d’art contemporain, scheduled to reopen at the end of the year.

*Source: Press release Tuesday 27 July 2021, Centre Pompidou.

*Photo Captation: Xavier Rey © DR.