Jean Claude Gandur entrusted Jean-Charles Vergne (54) with the responsibility of transforming an important private collection into a museum institution. The future establishment, announced in May 2024 in Caen by the Swiss collector, is now entering its scientific and institutional structuring phase. The museum, which is planned to open by 2030, is to be built on a 51,000 square meter site near the Caen Memorial.
Director of Frac Auvergne at the age of 25 and for nearly 27 years until 2023, in Clermont-Ferrand, Jean-Charles Vergne left his mark on the regional structure through the consistency of his editorial line. Under his leadership, the Frac has gradually established itself as a recognized player in the dissemination of contemporary art, around a collection which today numbers more than 1,000 works. Its program favors questions of image, painting and narration.
The Frac Auvergne has welcomed recognized artists from the international scene. Jean-Charles Vergne has notably organized exhibitions dedicated to Luc Tuymans, Albert Oehlen, Richard Tuttle, Raoul De Keyser and Katharina Grosse. In 2017, he presented the first French institutional exhibition of photographer Gregory Crewdson. In 2012, he also dedicated an exhibition to the engravings and films of filmmaker David Lynch.
Alongside his duties as director, Jean-Charles Vergne develops an activity as an art critic and teacher. A member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), he regularly publishes texts devoted to contemporary art and teaches at the ESC Clermont as well as at the National School of Architecture of Clermont-Ferrand. He also participated in several national bodies, notably the acquisition commission of the National Center for Plastic Arts (CNAP) and the jury for the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2018.
In Caen, Jean-Charles Vergne will have to design an entirely new museum intended to present the collections put together by Jean-Claude Gandur. These are divided into five main groups: archaeology, fine arts, decorative arts, ethnology and contemporary African and diaspora art. In total, the foundation preserves more than 3,500 works covering a period ranging from Antiquity to contemporary creation. A first glimpse of this set was presented in the summer of 2025 at the Caen Town Hall in the exhibition “In the Eye of the Collector”.
