Diversity of voices, diversity of languages : one week of events and readings in Lyon and in the Rhône-Alpes region.
Jean Clair
AUTHOR / HISTORIAN
France
BiographY
Jean Clair, born in Paris in 1940, is a French writer, essayist and art historian. The former director of the Picasso Museum, he has been a member of the Académie française since May 2008. After receiving his doctor of arts degree from the faculty of modern letters and science, he turned to philosophy and art history at the Sorbonne, then a Ph.D. in Art at the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University.
Clair entered the literary world and became the art columnist at the Nouvelle Revue française. Taking second place in the Musées de France curator recruitment exam in 1966 at age 26, he was an assistant curator for the Musées de France until 1969, curator of the National Museum of Modern Art for ten years, and of the Centre Pompidou’s graphic arts cabinet between 1980 and 1989. Appointed conservateur général du Patrimoine [general curator of Heritage] in 1989, he directed the Picasso Museum in Paris until 2005. He has also been the commissioner of a great number of national exhibitions and directed the centenary edition of the Venice Biennial.
Editor-in-chief of Chroniques de l'Art vivant from 1970 to 1975, Clair was a professor of art history at the École du Louvre between 1977 and 1980, and founded the Cahiers du Musée d'Art Moderne, which he directed from 1978 to 1986. He regularly takes part in discussions about contemporary art and the distribution of art.
