Currently advisor to Laurence des Cars, the president and director of the Louvre Museum, Barthélemy Glama-Etchegoyen will take over as director of the Bonnat-Helleu Museum in Bayonne next February. “It is a choice of the heart, he explained to Arts Journal, I am Basque and I know this museum very well. »
Former student of the École Normale Supérieure Barthélemy Glama-Etchegoyen (32 years old) began by teaching at Columbia University in New York, where he completed his thesis on colonial archeology and its influence on the collections of the Musée du Louvre. This specialization earned him missions with the cultural services of the French Embassy in New York (2018-2020), the office of the Minister of Defense, where he was deputy to the Culture, Memory and Research advisor (2015-2016 ), as well as in the editorial services of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The teacher has long been a correspondent for Arts Journal in the United States (in New York) where he covered the news of exhibitions in museums and galleries. Passionate about new technologies, he has followed the rise and relative decline of NFTs.
He takes up his position at an important moment for the Bonnat-Helleu Museum. Closed since 2011 for modernization and extension work (the space will be enlarged to reach 7,000 m2, with the addition of the adjacent former primary school), the museum should reopen this fall. “I am particularly happy to participate in the rebirth of this “Petit Louvre in the Basque Country”” he explained.
The lighthouse of the Bonnat-Helleu museum by the Brochet Lajus Pueyo agency (BLV)
The museum has had two directors during its construction. The first, Sophie Harent, left her position in 2018 for the Magnin Museum in Dijon, and the contract of Benjamin Couilleaux who took over was not renewed in 2022. The work was then temporarily supervised by Sabine Cazenave, curator of the Bayonne museum.
In Bayonne, Barthélemy Glama-Etchegoyen should not stray far from the Louvre. In 2023, the Parisian museum signed a large-scale partnership with the Bonnat-Helleu Museum as part of its regional policy. The Bonnat-Helleu Museum was already the depository, since 1922, of the most important Louvre repository on French territory. This deposit enriches the museum’s collection, recognized in particular for its drawing room including sheets signed, among others, by Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.
The partnership agreement between the Louvre and the Bonnat-Helleu Museum, lasting five years, will give rise to new projects, in particular temporary exhibitions and co-curatorship agreements. Enough to breathe new life into an art museum that is close to the hearts of the Basques, a region which has lacked a fine arts museum since its closure in 2011.
The Bonnat-Helleu museum in Bayonne.
