Six months after the sudden disappearance of Sylvain Amic, Annick Lemoine (57) takes over the reins of the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée de l’Orangerie. Until then director of the Petit Palais, she will take up her duties on March 19. An art historian and general heritage curator, she is a specialist in European painting from the 17th and 18th centuries.
Annick Lemoine began her professional career in university, as a lecturer at Rennes 2 University, before joining cultural administration. From 2009 to 2010, she served as advisor for artistic education and cultural democratization in the office of the Minister of Culture, Frédéric Mitterrand. She then headed the department of Art History, Collections and Heritage at the Villa Médicis (2010-2015). Annick Lemoine was appointed scientific director of the Fontainebleau Art History Festival from 2015 to 2018, before directing the Cognacq-Jay Museum in 2018. She was appointed head of the Petit Palais in January 2022, where she succeeds Christophe Leribault appointed… in Orsay.
The art historian has also distinguished herself as an exhibition curator, co-organizing several major events on baroque painting: “Les Bas-fonds du baroque. The Rome of vice and misery” (presented at the Villa Medici then at the Petit Palais in 2015), “Valentin de Boulogne. Reinventing Caravaggio” (Louvre Museum then Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, 2017) or “The Empire of the Senses. From Boucher to Greuze” (Cognacq-Jay Museum, 2021).
After leading the renovation of the Fabre Museum in Montpellier for eleven years (2000-2011), Sylvain Amic took over the management of the Rouen museums in 2011. He joined the cabinet of the Minister of Culture Rima Abdul Malak in 2022 as an advisor for museums and the arts and crafts. In April 2024, he was appointed president of the Orsay and Orangerie museums, thus realizing his dream of leading this institution. Sylvain Amic died following a devastating heart attack on August 31, 2025, at the age of 58. His disappearance led to a prolonged vacancy in the management of the Musée d’Orsay.
