Application documents have been piling up on the desk of former gallery owner Yvon Lambert for several months. Finally, it was François Quintin, current Delegate for Fine Arts at the Ministry of Culture, who was chosen from among the thirty candidates to direct the Lambert Collection in Avignon. He succeeds Alain Lombard, who has held these positions since 2018. According to the procedure foreseen for an art center of national interest, this request was validated by the Board of the Collection with the consent of the Minister of Culture. In fact, the Lambert Collection, a museum born from the star gallery owner’s donation to the State in 2012, is the largest private donation in the last fifty years, a donation of around 550 masterpieces to French public collections, including the Saga , surrounded by shadowy areas and dysfunctions caused great problems for the state agencies, especially the National Center for Fine Arts that manages it. It is therefore François Quintin who, starting in September, will direct this monster collection made up of works by such renowned artists as Nan Goldin, Andres Serrano, Christian Boltanski, Daniel Buren or Douglas Gordon…
From the Ecole du Louvre to the Fondation Cartier
Born in 1967, François Quintin has had a career that has seen him switch back and forth between the private and public sectors, being comfortable managing a gallery, working on a foundation team or managing a public body . François Quintin, who has held the post of Delegate for Fine Arts at the Ministry of Culture since 2020, started at the Fondation Cartier in Paris in 1994 after studying art history at the Ecole Louvre and visiting the Guggenheim Museum in New York. He then went to Champagne-Ardenne in 2001, where he became director of the regional fund for contemporary art. Back to private life in 2007 at the Xippas gallery in Paris in the Marais. After several years at the helm of the Lafayette Anticipations project, François Quintin becomes artistic director of this place, which opens its doors in 2018 before joining the Ministry of Culture in 2020. His experience will be welcome in Avignon, a city with a social fabric fragile, to direct a collection of masterpieces displayed in the two 18th-century mansions that received a new wing in 2015. On May 25, Dilecta Editions published a 450-page book with a selection of symbolic works of this collector’s passion (An intimate history of art, Yvon Lambert, a collection, a donation, a place, 440 pages). From June 30th we will see Pascale Marthine Tayou, Eva Jospin, Louise Lawler and an exhibition of paintings with masterpieces… from the Lambert donation.
