The former Director of Tate Modern, Chris Dercon has been appointed President of the French government cultural body, Réunion des musées nationaux-Grand Palais (Rmn-GP). This puts him as the head of the Grand Palais as well as the Musée du Luxembourg. He recently exited from Berlin’s People’s Theatre after being hounded out by former and active employees of the art centre.
He will now take over Paris’s largest and most prestigious exhibition venue which is to undertake a total refit. It will move temporarily to another location near the Eiffel Tower for some years.The 2021 and 2022 editions of Fiac and the Paris Photo fair will now be held in a temporary structure on the Champ de Mars near the Eiffel Tower.
Franck Riester, France’s new culture minister, announced the Belgian administrator, as the new president of the Réunion des Musées Nationaux–Grand Palais for five years, starting in January 2019.
The RMN is a new public cultural establishment that reports to the Minister for Culture and Communication. The Rmn-GP was set up in 2011 following the merger between the Réunion des musées nationaux and the Grand Palais, hence our name. The venue also hosts the international art fair, FIAC, Paris Photo, and the city’s most spectacular fashion shows by brands such as Chanel and Hermès.
Chris Dercon (Belgium) is a Belgian art historian and curator. He is the former director of Tate Modern in London and former intendant of the Volksbühne in Berlin. Dercon studied art history, theatre and film theory in Amsterdam and Leiden. He has worked as a documentary maker, independent curator and cultural producer. Before joining the Tate, he was co-founding director of Witte de With in Rotterdam (1990–95), and director of the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in the same city (1996–2003), and of Haus der Kunst in Munich (2003–11). He is also an advisor to the Generali Foundation of Vienna and MACBA.