The appointment of Yann Le Touher (44 years old) as general delegate of the Fondation des Bernardins seems natural. A specialist in patronage, he has devoted most of his career to this field. It joins a strategic structure, which provides nearly a third of the institution’s annual resources. The president of the Foundation, Bruno Angles, praised his experience, seeing it as a lever to strengthen fundraising for the development and influence of the Collège des Bernardins.
Yann Le Touher cut his teeth in the biggest Parisian museums – Musée d’Orsay, Center Pompidou, Réunion des musées nationaux-Grand Palais – before joining the Louvre Museum as director of patronage. For seven years, he contributed to renewing the institution’s patronage strategy and diversifying the Louvre’s patron profiles, by developing international links (United States, Japan, Middle East). It thus made it possible to raise 167 million euros in sponsorship between 2017 and 2023.
After more than fifteen years in the public museum sector, Yann Le Touher joined the Art Explora Foundation in 2023 as director of external relations.
A former Cistercian college from the 13th century, restored by the diocese of Paris and reopened in 2008, the Collège des Bernardins has become a place of training, research, creation and dialogue between faith, culture and the economic world. It does not benefit from the universal reputation of a museum like the Louvre. Its influence remains mainly intellectual and spiritual. Yann Le Touher will therefore have to adapt his methods to a more restricted and targeted context, innovating without distorting the identity of the place. Aware of the pitfalls, he emphasizes that fundraising is not easy. It requires agility, innovation and creativity in an increasingly competitive environment.
Yann Le Touher succeeds Emmanuel Cortey, in office since 2022. The latter notably contributed to professionalizing the Foundation’s fundraising, by modernizing methods that are still unusual in this ecclesial world. Before arriving at Les Bernardins, Emmanuel Cortey spent nearly ten years as deputy director of Yahad-In Unu, an association dedicated to documenting the Holocaust by bullets and collecting testimonies.
