The French Minister of Culture and Communication Frédéric Mitterand has announced that Bourriaud will take over as director of l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 2012. Bourriaud was born in 1965 and is a leading international art critic. He has been the co-director of Palais de Tokyo from 1999-2006 together with Jerome Sans and was the Gulbenkian curator of contemporary art at Tate Britain, London, 2008-2010. In 2009 he curated the fourth Tate Triennial, titled Altermodern. For the last couple of years he has held a position in the French Ministry of Culture.
Charlotte Laubard, Director of CAPC, the contemporary art museum in Bordeaux, commented to Le Monde that ”With Bourriaud the school is opening itself up to a generation which has been making art history over the last fifteen years and which will elevate it to a whole new level in the international art world. He is perhaps not the ideal leader – administration is not his preferred activity! But he’s a brilliant theoretician and he knows how the artistic institutions should be renewed and brought into the 21st century.”
Nicolas Bourriaud, who succeeds Henry-Claude Cousseau, will take up his new position in January of 2012.
