Living Museums. Conversations with Leading Museum Directors

Between a Temple of Art and a Big Event

We think art museums have been here forever. And yet they change all the time, notably thanks to the individuals who lead them. For this impressive inquiry, Donatien Grau travelled to Williamstown, New York, Vienna, Oxford, Ampthill, Moscow, Berlin, London, to speak to the people who made the world of museums from the 1960s to the 2000s. Read how the Louvre had its first director from its first director; how the Guggenheim Bilbao was invented from the man who invented it; how Cellini’s Saliera was retrieved after having been stolen from the Kunsthistorisches Museum, by the man who retrieved it; how the Pushkin lived through the ages by its Director for fifty years. Read how museums across the Western world became what they are today: places for world-audiences, political forums, as much as places for the contemplation of art.

Interviews with MICHEL LACLOTTE, SIR TIMOTHY CLIFFORD, PHILIPPE DE MONTEBELLO, IRINA ANTONOVA, PETER-KLAUS SCHUSTER, SIR MARK JONES, TOM KRENS, WILFRIED SEIPEL, HENRI LOYRETTE.

DONATIEN GRAU (*1987) is a critic, scholar, and museum executive. He was selected by Apollo Magazine as one of the “Forty under Forty Europe” in 2014 and currently serve as the musée d’Orsay’s head of contemporary programs.