Appointment of Olivier Gabet as Director of the Art Department of the Louvre Museum

Rima Abdul-Malak, Minister of Culture, on the proposal of Laurence des Cars, appoints Olivier Gabet, President and Director of the Louvre Museum, as Director of the Department of Art.

Olivier Gabet succeeds Jannic Durand, general curator of heritage, recognized specialist in the Western Middle Ages and Byzantine art, who joined the Louvre in 1983 and has been in charge of the Department of Art since 2013. Jannic Durand asserts his pension rights. Olivier Gabet was Deputy Director General of MAD and Director of the Museums of Decorative Arts in Paris. He will take up his duties at the Louvre Museum from 1^er september 2022.

The Department of Art of the Louvre Museum houses a unique collection of objects of various shapes, materials and eras from the Middle Ages to the Second Empire: jewellery, silverware, enamels, ivory, bronzes and hard stones, ceramics, glassware, stained glass, furniture, tapestries… It has about 30 employees. The Director of this department, in addition to his functions of conservation, collections management and research, placed under the authority of the President-Director of the Louvre Museum, is also called to sit in the national and regional scientific bodies responsible for heritage policy (acquisitions, restoration, loans, deposits, etc.) under one of the major departments of national museums coordinated by the Ministry of Culture.

Born in 1976, Olivier Gabet graduated from the École nationale des Chartes (1996-2000) and the École nationale du Patrimoine (Alexandra David-Néel class, 2001-2002). He became curator in charge of the Mobilier et Objets d'art collection at the Musée d'Art moderne de la ville de Paris (2002 to 2004) and curator in charge of the 1850-1900 collections at the Musée d'Orsay (2005-2007).

From 2008 to 2013, he joined the Agence France-Muséums for the Louvre Abu Dhabi project as curator in charge of decorative arts (from 2008 to 2013) and as deputy scientific director (from 2011 to 2013).

In September 2013, he was appointed to the Arts décoratifs – director of museums and then deputy director general in July 2019 – where he instilled a new dynamic. This includes the exhibition “Christian Dior, couturier du rêve” (2017-2018) which attracts nearly 710,000 visitors, but also the exhibition “Luxes” presented at the Louvre Abu Dhabi (2019) and Paris (2020) or very recently the presentation of the Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne date at the Musée des Arts décoratifs.

Olivier Gabet is the author of numerous publications on decorative arts and design in the XIX^e and XX^e centuries. He teaches regularly, especially at the Sorbonne Abu Dhabi.