On the proposal of Franck Riester, Minister of Culture, the President of the Republic has reappointed Jean-François Chougnet as President of the Museum of Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean (Mucem), for a second term.
Franck Riester wishes to salute the record of Jean-François Chougnet at the head of the Mucem and welcomes his reappointment.
Under his leadership, the Mucem became the most visited museum in the region, with more than 1,330,000 visitors to the site in 2018. His attendance testifies to his appropriation by his territory but also by an increasingly large foreign audience. The reorientation of cultural programming, in a more interdisciplinary approach, and the launch of the redesign of the museum’s exhibition spaces, with the renovation of a section of the permanent “Connectivities” gallery, contributed to this success.
Through new orientations in its procurement policy and its national and international cooperation policy, Mucem has both confirmed its affiliation with the National Museum of Folk Arts and Traditions (MNATP) and strengthened its European and Mediterranean dimension,” the Minister said.
Under the leadership of Jean-François Chougnet, the Mucem has also contributed greatly to the national project for the democratization of access to culture and for arts and cultural education and has been awarded several times in this capacity.
This second three-year term will allow Jean-François Chougnet to stabilize and amplify the factors that contribute to the dynamic in which the MUHC is embedded and making its success.
By implementing an always ambitious, diversified and open programming, a proactive arts and cultural education policy, striving to consolidate and expand partnerships with European and Mediterranean museums, Jean-François Chougnet will continue, with the teams of the institution, to make the Mucem an essential institution at the territorial, national and international levels.
Aged 62, Jean-François Chougnet is a historian, a graduate of the Paris Institute of Political Studies, and a former student of the Ecole Nationale d'Administration. He was assigned to the Ministry of Culture when he left the ENA and devoted his entire career to cultural policies. He was Director General of the Public Establishment of the Park and the Villette Hall from 2001 to 2006, before being appointed Director of the Berardo Foundation in Lisbon from 2007 to 2011, a museum dedicated to modern and contemporary art. In 2005, he was Commissioner General of the Year of Brazil in France. In April 2011, Jean-François Chougnet became Director General of the Marseille-Provence 2013 association and coordinated all the events related to this event, which had the greatest success. On 8 September 2014, he was appointed President of Mucem, succeeding Bruno Suzarelli, prefigurer and first president of the establishment.