According to information from New York Timesconfirmed by the museum to the American newspaper, Bénédicte Savoy will occupy the Louvre Chair in 2026. She will succeed the philosopher Souleymane Bachir Diagne, holder in 2024, and to Glenn Lowry, director of the MoMA, in 2025. Created in 2009, the Louvre Chair is an academic device, without administrative responsibilities, entrusted to an intellectual influence, Nourish reflection on the museum and its collections thanks to a cycle of conferences.
The appointment of Bénédicte Savoy is highly symbolic and risks fueling controversy. In 2018, she co -edited with Felwine Sarr a report commissioned by Emmanuel Macron on the restitution of the African heritage, following her speech in Ouagadougou in 2017. This document, first of the genre in France, opened a public and political debate by stressing that 85 to 90 % of major African works are outside the continent.
This report had been strongly criticized. Stéphane Martin, former president of the Musée du Quai Branly had thus described it as “Hatred cry against the concept of museum”.
Former student of the École normale supérieure, associate of German and doctor of Germanic studies, Bénédicte Savoy is a specialist in cultural transfers. She received several distinctions, including the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 2016 and the European Test Prize 2025 for Who owns beauty?. She has been sitting on the Louvre scientific council since 2015.
During her chair year, she will offer a series of conferences devoted to contemporary issues of the property, the origin and the restitution of the works. The specific program has not yet been communicated, but everything indicates that it will pay particular attention to the restitution processes.
