Jean-Baptiste Delorme is the new director of the Departmental Museum of Contemporary Art in Rochechouart (Haute-Vienne). He succeeds Sébastien Faucon, who held the position for six years until last April.
Jean-Baptiste Delorme studied at the Heritage Institute, the École du Louvre, the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and Goldsmiths University in London. Before occupying this position, he was curator and exhibition curator at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris from 2023 to 2024. He was also responsible for the plastic arts collection at the National Center for Plastic Arts (Aubervilliers).
The museum, created in 1985, is located in the Rochechouart castle. The building was extended in the 2000s by architect Jean-François Bodin and Atelier Ardant. The museum offers a selection of works ranging from the 1960s to contemporary creations, gathered around three main themes: history, landscape and imagination.
Among the 1,300 works, the museum presents a collection linked to nature, notably by artists of Arte Povera (Giuseppe Penone, Alighiero e Boetti, Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis, Michelangelo Pistoletto) and Land Art (Richard Long and Hamish Fulton). The collections also include contemporary works by Christian Boltanski, Annette Messager and Bruce Nauman. The collection also includes a major donation of 700 works by the Dadaist artist Raoul Hausmann (1886-1971).
Jean-Baptiste Delorme wishes to follow in the legacy of previous curators and directors of the Rochechouart Museum, by retaining the themes that make the collections specific. The new director knows the museum well, having been trained within it during his studies, he reports for lepopulaire.fr.
The Rochechouart Museum is a springboard towards other institutions. Several directors got their start there before moving to larger museums. Sébastien Faucon worked at the Rochechouart museum from 2017 to 2024 before becoming curatorial director at the LAM (Lille Métropole Musée d’art moderne, d’art contemporain et d’art brut) in 2024. Annabelle Ténèze was appointed director of the Louvre- Lens in 2017 after directing the Abattoirs of Toulouse, while Olivier Michelon became chief curator at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in 2016 after also directing the Abattoirs.
