Paris, Grasse (Alpes-Maritimes). A new corporate foundation will be created this year: after having invested largely in the valuation of its heritage over the past ten years, the perfumer Fragonard gives more visibility to its cultural activities. Philippe Costamagna (66) was chosen by the Sisters Costa – Anne, Agnès and Françoise, who direct the group – to carry out this project. The art historian, specialist in the Florentine Renaissance, cumulates here the role of curator of museums and director of the future foundation.
Since 2006, he directed the Palais Fesch-Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Ajaccio, a position he resigned in June 2024. Philippe Costamagna wore a museum project dedicated to Napoleon, which was to settle in the town hall of Ajaccio: a large-scale project, supported by the mayor, but who no longer has the favors of the municipal council. The bogging down of this file precipitated its departure, effective in September.
A network of 6 museums
Within the Maison Fragonard, Philippe Costamagna now directs six museums: three perfume museums in Paris, and three museums in Grasse (Musée du Parfum, Provençal Museum of Costume, Villa-Museum JH Fragonard). Which of them will be an integral part of the Foundation? This question must be decided in the course of the year: the museums of the perfume, which are places of presentation of the heritage but also points of sale for the perfumer, may not respond to the “non -profit” nature of the statutes of a business foundation.
The network of Fragonard museums will extend with the opening in July of a “fashion and costume museum” in Arles (Bouches-du-Rhône). Announced in 2021, this inauguration was delayed by the crisis linked to the COVVI-19, during which the company paused the restoration of the Bouchaud de Bussy hotel. Located in the city center, this 17th century mansion had become a medical clinic in the 1960s, then a hotel in the 1980s.
Fragonard chose the KO studio (which designed the Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Marrakech) to make this restoration as well as the first scenography of the museum, which will only welcome temporary routes. The latter will enhance two collections of Provencal costume, that of Magali Pascal – a collector at the origin of the museum, who died shortly after the acquisition of her fund by the Costa sisters – and that of Hélène Costa, the mother of the three leaders. The collection of the latter is already presented in the Provençal museum of costume and the jewel of Grasse, and will be shared between the two establishments.
“This inauguration will be the highlight of our cultural policy, explains Agnès Webster-Costa, It was the culmination of a museum project that Magali Pascal has been trying to create for thirty years. »»
To direct this new museum, Philippe Costamagna can rely on a specialist in Provencal costume, Clément Trouche, historic manager of the Pascal collection and himself a costume collector. The former director of the Palais Fesch will also pursue the policy of acquiring the company centered on Grassois artists (Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Marguerite Gérard, Jean-Baptiste Mallet), as well as a programming of women’s artists: the Portraitiste Adèle de Romance (1769-1846) will thus be in the spotlight in Grasse this summer.
