Zut alors - row over Versailles appointment
October 4 2011
The appointment of a new director of the Palace of Versailles has created an upset in France. Catherine Pegard (above) is a journalist appointed by Nicholas Sarkozy, for whom she has worked as an adviser. The curator-ati in France are appalled that the new director is not a museum insider. From The Art Newspaper:
“The fact that Sarkozy wants to reward his colleague is in the natural order of things, but not with Versailles,” Jean-Christophe Castelain, the editor of our sister paper Le Journal des Arts, says in an editorial. “Her appointment is a mistake; she is not the issue, but her CV is. Thirty years in political journalism and a stint in the presidential cabinet does not equip her to run a complex site which employs 1,000 staff, has visitor figures of 3.5 million and a budget of €80m.”
Having tried and failed to get into Versailles on more than one occasion, it seems to me that the place could do with some fresh direction. French state-run museums can sometimes be too introverted, and treat visitors as annoyances.
