Under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture, the board of directors of the Jeu de Paume and its president Alain Dominique Perrin unanimously appointed Quentin Bajac director of the Jeu de Paume.
He succeeds Marta Gili, director of the Jeu de Paume from 2006 to 2018. Recognized for the quality and consistency of her programming, she has presented 180 monographic and thematic exhibitions, in the field of historical and contemporary photography, as well as video and online creation.
Born in 1965, graduated from the Institute of Political Studies of Paris and the National Institute of Heritage, Quentin Bajac became curator of photography at the Musée d’Orsay in 1995, then joined the Center Pompidou in 2003. Professor at Ecole du Louvre, responsible for the chair of History of Photography, he was promoted in 2010 head of the Cabinet of Photography at the Center Pompidou. Curator of various exhibitions on modern and contemporary photography, he notably organized William Klein (2005), Subversion of images: Surrealism, photography, film (2009), and Here is Paris: Modernities in photography, 1920-1950-The Christian Bouqueret collection ( 2012).
Quentin Bajac chief curator of photography at MoMA from 2013 to 2018 organized A World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio (2014), Scenes for a New Heritage: Contemporary Art from the Collection (2015), and recently , Stephen Shore (2018). He is co-curator of the exhibition Modern Being: The MoMA in Paris at the Louis Vuitton Foundation (2017).
He has written a number of books, including Le mélange des genres with Martin Parr (2010), Brassaï, the nocturnal loafer with Sylvie Aubenas (2012) and Robert Doisneau: Pêcheur d’images (2012). He is also the author of a three-volume history of photography (Découvertes Gallimard, 2000-2010). He has devoted articles to photographers and artists using photography such as Alexander Calder, Man Ray, Lucien Herve, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Luigi Ghirri, Karen Knorr, Mimmo Jodice, Lise Sarfati, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Luc Delahaye.
Located on Place de la Concorde, the Jeu de Paume is a center of contemporary art of reference dedicated to photography and image. The issues of photography and contemporary image are highlighted in a multidisciplinary perspective, a live space of exhibitions, meetings, teaching and publishing. Since 2010, an antenna of the Jeu de Paume at the Château de Tours has allowed the region’s photographic collection to circulate in the regions.
