Luce Lebart will succeed Gilles Mora, who had held this position since 2010 and has largely contributed to the national and international recognition of the place. This appointment comes while the popular pavilion, closed for renovation work since February 2024, will reopen on December 2, 2025 with the exhibition “Extreme hotel” on Raymond Depardon.
Born in 1970, Luce Lebart is historian and exhibition curator specializing in photography. His career begins in Montpellier as manager of the funds figured in the Hérault Departmental Archives. She then joined the French Photography Society in Paris, where she ensures the management of the collections, then the Canadian Institute of Photography of the Museum of Fine Arts in Canada in Ottawa, where she directs the development of a research laboratory devoted to vernacular photography. Since 2018, she has been a researcher and commissioner for the Archive of Modern Conflict, a private reference collection. Since 2022, she has co -edited the Italian festival Fotografia Europea in Reggio Emilia. Commissioner of more than forty exhibitions, she was very active between 2012 and 2019 in Arles meetings. She is also author of twenty books, including A global history of women photographers.
The popular pavilion occupies a classified building, built in 1891 in a neo-Renaissance style and transformed since the 1990s into space dedicated to photography. Free location and open to all, it is renovated from February to November 2025 to improve accessibility, energy performance and museum lighting. The reopening will coincide with the inauguration of a season dedicated to Depardon, in connection with the artist’s recent donation to the Fabre museum.
The position of artistic director includes the development of scientific and cultural programming, the conduct of partnerships – local and international -, and the responsibility of an establishment project focused on the accessibility and study of the photographic medium. According to the city of Montpellier, “His journey as a historian of photography as well as her scientific rigor and his desire to make photography accessible to the greatest number means that the artistic direction of Luce Lebart will be continuing the artistic direction provided by Gilles Mora from 2010 to 2025, which allowed the popular pavilion to acquire national and international influence”.
Gilles Mora, a recognized specialist in American photography, provided ambitious programming, receiving more than a million visitors and organizing major exhibitions devoted to Brassaï, Peter Lindbergh, Bernard Plossu or Lynne Cohen. His mandate ended with the exhibition dedicated to Gisèle Freund in February 2025. Aged 80, the historian will not take a new position, but will organize projects punctually, such as conferences or exhibitions. The municipality said that this passage of relays responds to the desire to open the place to a new generation of researchers, while guaranteeing scientific continuity and social openness which constitute the DNA of the popular pavilion.
