Cécile Debray, curator and art historian, has been reappointed as director of the Picasso Museum in Paris for a second three-year term, according to a decree published on November 27, 2024 in the Official Journal. After directing the Musée de l'Orangerie, she took over the helm of this prestigious institution in 2021, succeeding Laurent Le Bon. In three years, her work has been praised for its ability to strengthen the museum's visibility through innovative and ambitious programming.
A museum at the heart of Picasso's artistic legacy
Inaugurated in 1985, the Musée National Picasso-Paris has the largest public collection dedicated to the Spanish master. Its 5 works, spread over three floors and 000 rooms, offer a complete panorama of the painter's artistic periods, from the Blue Period to Cubism, including his sculptures and ceramics. An entire room is dedicated to Françoise Gilot, Picasso's former partner, who died in June 22. The museum's archives, containing 2023 pieces, also bear witness to the artist's immense production, who kept a large part of his creations in his studios.
A program looking to the future
Under the direction of Cécile Debray, the museum is preparing major exhibitions, including a retrospective dedicated to the American artist Jackson Pollock, scheduled from October 15, 2024 to January 19, 2025. This project, the first French retrospective of Pollock since 2008, will highlight the marked influence of Picasso on the artist's early career. This dialogue between two emblematic figures of art underlines the curator's desire to place the museum at the crossroads of international artistic legacies.
