Rochechouart (Haute-Vienne). What is happening at Rochechouart Castle? For several months, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Haute-Vienne, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2025, has been without direction. After its winter closure, it was to reopen its doors on Sunday March 1, with an exhibition “designed and created by museum staff, all professions combined”can we read on the establishment’s website. This display designed from the collection will remain in place until December 15. It is described as “a collective work (…) which speaks of a museum in renewal, and a team committed to inventing, together, the museum of tomorrow”. But a team, for the moment, therefore, deprived of direction and extremely small: the contract of Jean-Baptiste Delorme, recruited as director of the museum in the summer of 2024 to succeed Sébastien Faucon (who left for LaM), has not been renewed. The deputy director, Chantal Texier, a pillar of the museum for thirty years, is on rest following a heart attack in August 2025. The person responsible for mediation and cultural programming who worked alongside her in the public service has resigned. The security manager retired after taking sick leave.
This regional museum houses a rich collection of 1,300 pieces
ranging from Arte Povera and Land Art to contemporary art. There are sculptures by Tony Cragg, paintings by Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter, works by Christian Boltanski, Annette Messager, Bruce Nauman. Or even photographs by Sophie Ristelhueber and Jochen Lempert. The place is also known for holding a very important collection of works by Raoul Hausmann, a figure of Dadaism.
An artist threatens to revoke her donationIn 2020, the museum announced the enrichment of its collections thanks to the donation from the artist Joëlle de La Casinière (born in 1944): 300 drawings, original manuscripts, as well as several films and videos. This donation also included more than 200 graphic works and engravings by the prematurely deceased artist Sophie Podolski (1953-1974), which we are rediscovering today. In 2026, a cycle of traveling exhibitions around Joëlle de La Casinière had been planned. But, as the donor is surprised in a letter addressed to the president of the Department,“this project is now called into question by new decisions – as worrying as they are incomprehensible – taken by your administration, which weaken (the) museum (…)” . Registered mail, stating its“dismay” but also the possibility for her to play “the revocatory action provided for by articles 953 et seq. of the Civil Code on the entire donation”
remained unanswered. The Château de Rochechouart belongs to the Department of Haute-Vienne, which is also the owner and manager of the Departmental Museum of Contemporary Art which it houses. While several witnesses evoke a work climate that has become anxiety-provoking and destabilizing managerial methods on the part of the departmental cultural directorate, the latter has rejected the request for clarification addressed to it by theArts Journal . Sébastien Nany, Deputy Director General for Territorial Solidarity at the Haute-Vienne Departmental Council, however, chose to provide answers by telephone, evoking “problems of behavior and positioning of Mr. Delorme and Mrs. Texier” and “recruits in progress
“. However, several questions remain unanswered concerning the non-renewal of Jean-Baptiste Delorme’s contract and the absence of management of the museum. Added to this is the lack of service to the public due to a lack of qualified staff, as well as the current security conditions of the museum and its collection, entrusted to staff whose job it is not. And finally the cancellation of the programming initially planned for 2026 and partnerships with institutions in France and abroad (**).
A chain of inconsistent decisions
Inaugurated in 1985 by Guy Tosatto, the Rochechouart Museum was until now known as a “springboard” museum for the directors who succeeded one another: Olivier Michelon, Jean-Marc Prévost, Annabelle Ténèze, Sébastien Faucon… Jean-Baptiste Delorme was recruited in the summer of 2024. At the same time, the department’s culture department and the department’s department management Culture-Tourism-Sport-Youth were for their part renewed. As soon as he took up his position in the fall of 2024, relations with his hierarchy proved tense, sometimes bordering on cordiality. The functioning of the museum which has prevailed until now is contested. Very quickly, several decisions relating to day-to-day management are called into question, without explicit reasons. According to Jean-Baptiste Delorme, contradictory injunctions are multiplying: he is asked to develop the distribution of the collection internationally, but when he is invited at the expense of partner institutions as part of ongoing or future projects, his travel is refused – notably in London, as part of the opening of the “Sophie Podolski” exhibition at the Goldsmiths Center for Contemporary Art where more than 70 works from the Joëlle de La Casinière Fund are on loan.
The incomprehensible decisions keep coming. For example: the museum has an apartment to accommodate visual artists in residence. This device, although precious, because the very fact that Rochechouart can accommodate residents is one of the strong points of this great cultural facility in the region, is suddenly contested by the cultural management of the Department. And this, despite the establishment of agreements validated by the competent services. This leads to absurd situations: foreign artists urgently housed in expensive and unsuitable external accommodation. Or: a publication project on the history of the museum, launched as part of its 40th anniversary, has a budget, and its content is almost finalized. But at the last moment, the funding was withdrawn, without explanation.
Erratum – March 9, 2026 Contrary to what was published in the JdA
No. 672:
The museum’s collection consists of 1,300 pieces, not 300.(**) The Rochechouart Museum of Contemporary Art did not have a planned partnership with the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris.
