Sébastien Faucon is the new curatorial director of the LaM – Lille Métropole Museum of modern art, contemporary art and outsider art, located in Villeneuve-d’Ascq. His appointment follows the departure of Sébastien Delot, who left his position in September 2023 to take over as director of collections and mediation at the Picasso Museum in Paris.
Born in Lisieux in 1977, Sébastien Faucon studied modern history and cultural engineering before working at the Center Pompidou from 2003 to 2006. He held the position of advisor for visual arts at the Drac de Lorraine from 2006 to 2008, then joined the National Center for Plastic Arts (CNAP) as head of contemporary collections from 2009 to 2017. He then curated exhibitions “Collector” at the Tripostal of Lille (2011), ” Permanence “ with Boris Charmatz at the Musée de la Danse in Rennes (2014) and the performative exhibition “Things less, things more” at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2014).
In April 2017, he became curatorial director of the Contemporary Art Museum of Haute-Vienne, Château de Rochechouart. It highlights the work of emerging artists and organizes the first retrospectives in a French museum of Simone Fattal (2017), Jochen Lempert (2018), Babette Mangolte (2019), Michele Ciaccioferra (2021) and Prinz Gholam (2022).
As new director of LaM, Sébastien Faucon envisages a rich and diverse program, which mixes artistic disciplines and gives pride of place to artists lesser known to the general public. “The temporary exhibitions will focus on presenting great historical figures, promoting little-known emerging artists and (re)discovering great figures of outsider art”declares the museum in its press release.
The LaM was inaugurated in 1983 and its funds are made up of a donation from the Masurel couple, later enriched with the outsider art collection of the Aracine association. In 2010, the building built by Roland Simonet was expanded.
