At the Louvre, a director to prepare for the opening of the Department of Byzantium and Eastern Christianity

The rooms of the Department of Byzantium and Eastern Christianity in the Louvre Museum should not open before 2025. But a prefiguration director of this space has already been appointed: Maximilien Durand will take office on March 14, 2022, a announced the management of the cultural establishment in a press release on Friday February 18. For a year, he had been deputy director of collections and research at Paris Musées and curator of the Paris catacombs.

→ READ. At the Louvre, the new department of Byzantium and Eastern Christianity will open in 2024-2025

This graduate of the École du Louvre, born in 1976, had previously held various positions in the field of heritage conservation. Scientific Director of the NGO Patrimoine sans frontières from 2007 to 2008, he joined the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris from 2008 to 2011 as Head of Conservation and Restoration. He was then director of the Museum of Fabrics and the Museum of Decorative Arts in Lyon from 2011 to 2017, then responsible for the conservation of Christian Dior Couture from 2018 to 2019.

Define the scientific and cultural project

The press release also recalls that Maximilien Durand organized “more than twenty-five exhibitions” and that he led “international projects, particularly in certain regions concerned by the geographical extent of the future department – Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Serbia, Belarus, Russia – on the conservation, restoration and enhancement of the heritage of Orthodox communities of Byzantine tradition”.

His mission at the Louvre will be “to precisely define the scientific and cultural project” of this new conservation department, the ninth in the museum, “to propose the museographic project and steer its implementation with the team of architects appointed following an international competition, to lead the prefiguration team and to participate in information and communication around this department. A scientific committee will be set up to provide “additional expertise”.

More than 12,000 scattered works

The creation of this conservation department within the Louvre Museum was announced by the establishment’s new president and director, Laurence des Cars, when she took office six months ago.

More than 12,000 works, now dispersed in seven departments of the museum, will be brought together “in a coherent space, perfectly identified”. The latter will be placed physically at the junction of the rooms presenting Egyptian antiquities, Greek Etruscan and Roman antiquities and the arts of Islam, within the Denon wing.