The challenges of young museum directors

France. “When you go to the direction, it’s a whole world to apprehend. It is not only the management of a collection, but also that of a team, a budget … “, Summarizes Manon Lecaplain, director of museums of the city of Poitiers since July 2023. A first management position which she assumed, at 29 years old, at the end of her doctorate and then of her training at the National Institute of Heritage-National Institute of Territorial Studies (INP-IRT). “I was very in line with the values ​​brought by the city museum management, and I wanted to get involved in the development of a territorial cultural policy. But I still hesitated to apply. They pushed me, because it is still a big boat! »»

Taking the reins of the Museums of Poitiers means managing the Sainte-Croix Museum-the largest museum in the city-but also the collections of the Rupert-de-Chièvre Museum (closed since 2009) and the public garden of the Dunes hypogeum. And therefore supervise, in total, 45 permanent agents. “Management is necessarily a challenge, especially when we are under 30 years old and we are a woman, she recognizes. At the beginning, we experienced a feeling of impostor, of illegitimacy also, which is still a little even after two years from elsewhere. You must then put yourself in a posture of humility and listening. »»

For Rémi de Raphelis, the key lies above all in insurance. “When you have to manage people who can age your parents, you have to weigh”, Notes the new director of museums of Boulogne-Billancourt, in office since January. After having passed the INP competition at 30, by leading a thesis in parallel, he took the lead of these three museums devoted to sculptors Paul Landowski, Paul Belmondo and the 1930s. “Beyond the training, you have to feel ready to lead a team of 22 people. »» Because if management courses are exempt, the theory only prepares to a certain extent for the reality on the ground.

If these young conservatives, competitions just in pocket, find themselves at high position of responsibility, it is also linked to the reality of recruitment. “Leaving our training at the INP, we are more likely to access a direction than to a collector’s position. On my promotion of 17 students, 12 have a responsibility for director ”specifies Rémi de Raphelis. “At the start, I was rather looking for an assistant or collection manager position. But the job offers mainly concerned directions. And many complicated positions, with closed museums, work in progress ”Corrobore Fanny Girard who, in 2022, finally set his sights on the Toulouse-Lautrec museum in Albi. At 27, she took the reins of this institution dedicated to the work of the Albigensian painter, located in a former episcopal palace very busy in Occitanie with nearly 175,000 visitors per year. “What then marked me a lot was respect for the status and the function of curator by agents. At the beginning, I was called “Madame La Cétorte in chief”. I had to specify that we could call me by my first name! »»

Personnel management: a critical issue on a daily basis

Even past this job, staff management remains a constant challenge. Supervising a team is having to coordinate, supervising very varied positions, knowing how to deal with possible disputes and dissatisfaction. An exercise to which Robert Blaizeau is broken, but which is nonetheless a daily issue. When he took, at 32, the management of the 11 museums of the Rouen Metropolis Normandy, a year after the departure of Sylvain AMIC for the cabinet of Rima Abdul-Malak (then Minister of Culture) in 2022, it was as an experienced curator. At just 24 years old, he had taken control of the museums of Saint-Lô (Manche) which he run for five years, before joining the services of the City of Rouen as Deputy Managing Director. “This experience confronted me with difficult situations on the human level. She prepared me for team management. »» And at the head of the Rouen museums, the stakes are high. “With the major works we are carrying out, there are obviously questions of positions of positions, relocating agents to another site …he explains. But the main challenge in the museums of the metropolis is to work on their rehabilitation, and I insist on the plural! We must not limit ourselves to the Beauvoisine project (the merger of the Museum and the Museum of Antiquities, encrypted at 70 million euros, editor’s note). We have a very heterogeneous museum park, with museums spread over five municipalities. Some built fifteen years ago, others that have not been renovated for seventy years. »»

Manage several sites, each with its own specificities and needs, raises specific issues. A challenge that is also confronted, to another extent, Benjamin Foudral, the director of the Courbet pole in Ornans (Doubs) who brings together the museum dedicated to the artist, but also his workshop and his family farm (scattered over several kilometers). It is in known ground that he arrives on the site in 2020, at 29 years old, when the workshop restoration site is prepared. Doctor, a specialist in painting from the end of the 19th century, he was not a conservative, but had already assured the police station of an exhibition at the museum. A handover which was therefore made quite naturally. “My first difficulty was rather the distribution of teams on several sites, succeeding in creating a synergy, he says. The museum remains the flagship, but the challenge is really to strengthen the idea of ​​a circuit between the different sites. »»

A museum is an actor in the territory with issues in relation

A museum in the region has issues related to the attractiveness of the territory, requiring a concert reflection with local communities. For a director, coincide his own project for the institution while meeting the political issues of elected officials can then prove to be difficult. “What was very new for me was the discovery of the functioning of the community”attests Jean-Baptiste Delorme, director of the castle of Rochechouart (Haute-Vienne) since last October. The 32 -year -old, the contemporary art commissioner is certainly a regular in institutions, but much less on a territorial scale. Conservative at the National Museum Marc Chagall (Nice) for a year, at the National Center for Plastic Arts (CNAP) for three years, then at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, he arrives in Rochechouart, seduced by the freedom of programming offered by the place and aware that the museum is often a springboard to larger institutions for its directors (like Annabelle Ténèze now at the head of the Louvre-Lens or Sébastien Faucon Villeneuve-d’Ascq). The only museum of contemporary public art in rural areas, it is in direct management of the department. “It’s completely different from what I was able to experience before. The directors, with whom I worked, were heritage curators, we were talking about the same language. Here, there is a whole direction of culture above me which does not come from the same universe, which does not always have the same problems. There is therefore pedagogy to do on both sides, to manage to understand each other. »»

“Being permanently in connection with your supervision is part of the very essence of the profession of museum director”adds Barthélémy Etchegoyen-Glama (32), the new director of the Bonnat-Helleu museum in Bayonne since February. And that is all the political stake of the museum that fascinates this great accustomed to speeches, comfortable in the administrative sphere as a museum. Responsible for missions at the Ministry of the Armed Forces, consultant at the French Embassy in the United States, correspondent of the Journal des Arts In New York, then advisor to Laurence des Cars at the Louvre, he arrived in Bayonne at a key moment. PROJECT PHART OF THE Municipality, the reopening of the museum is looming in the fall, after 28 million euros in work and almost fifteen years of waiting. “The most acrobatic part is always to take an in progress project, even if I had been following it for a long time already (as part of the museum’s partnership with the Louvre, NLDR.), he recalls. I had already worked with the mayor, elected officials and the municipal team … So necessarily, the dialogue is easier and interesting. »»

Among the director’s missions, this exchange with elected officials is a central point. And this, all the more in view of the tense context of public finances, which requires knowing how to defend its budget. “In a moment of budgetary difficulty, we must be able to bring all the elements of understanding, lighting to our guardianships”, Pointe Jean-Roch Dumont Saint Priest, curator named at the head of the Museum of Modern Art of Céret (Pyrénées-Orientales) in 2023, at 29, after three years as a project manager at the Center des Monuments Nationaux (CMN). A good school to understand cultural policies and to manage a museum to the status of public establishment of Cultural Cooperation (EPCC). For Aurélien Arnaud, director of the Fisheries Museum of Fécamp (Seine-Maritime) since 2023 (after his training at INP-IT), the lack of funds is also a permanent constraint. “There are many challenges to be met, and one of the main ones concerns building management which, originally, was a fish processing plant. It is a building that suffers, in places, from the wear of time ”he underlines. For any director, adaptability is therefore in order: it is necessary to find a balance between keeping a form of ambition, while remaining aware of the reality on the ground.

A position that combines prosaic research and tasks

What prevails in short is the requirement to be flexible, versatile. “” We must master the history of the site, collections, which has been carried out over the last thirty years to understand what is possible or not to do ”, Settles Bastien Lopez (28 years old), who was recruited as director of the Royal Château de Blois at the end of his training at the INP-anna, succeeding Élisabeth Latémolière, retired after more than twenty years in post. Since January, he has taken over the management of the very tourist monument (more than 300,000 visitors per year), a must among the Loire castles. “What is difficult is to combine scientific or strategic missions, while devoting time to colleagues. »» Assuming very diverse functions, which go beyond the only curatorial area: managing the administrative, logistics, developing partnerships … “You really have to touch everything, especially when you are a small team”, Underlines Noémie Wavre, who has just taken over the management of the Avallonais Museum Jean Després (Yonne), after having passed the conservation assistant competition. At 28, she took the reins of this small museum to the heterogeneous collection, which welcomes 4,000 visitors per year. “When I arrived, I was aware that I could no longer keep a lot of time for research. This is an aspect that we must put aside in the event of administrative emergencies, when you have to accommodate groups… ” Because in fact, for all these university profiles experienced in research, to look at the scientific aspect of the collections becomes a concern of second plan, which involves succeeding in giving time. “Even if my days are already ending very late, I try to keep an hour, even two if I can, in search, to the works, to the collection”supports Barthélémy Etchegoyen-Glama who, after a doctorate and several years of teaching, does not intend to make a cross on research. “It is absolutely essential. Being a museum director is not just a business job. »»