Quentin Bajac returns to Paris to head the Jeu de Paume

Harvey Benge - Quentin Bajac, Auckland, January 2012

Quentin Bajac chief curator of photography at MoMA New York, a position he has help for nearly 5 years, is returning to Paris to take up the directorship of the Jeu de Paume. Bajac succeeds Marta Gili, who was director at the Jeu de Paume from 2006 to 2018. Located on Place de la Concorde, the Jeu de Paume is a center of contemporary art,  dedicated to photography and image. 

While at MoMA Bajac organized numerous exhibitions including the Stephen Shore mid career retrospective which closed in this last May, “Scenes for a New Heritage: Contemporary Art from the Collection” (2015), ”A World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio” (2014), and ”Modern Photographs from the Thomas Walther Collection, 1909–1949” (2014). Bajac also co- curated the exhibition "Being Modern: The MoMA in Paris at the Louis Vuitton Foundation" (2017).

Born in 1965, Quentin Bajac graduated from the Institute of Political Studies of Paris and the National Institute of Heritage. Bajac became curator of photography at the Musée d'Orsay in 1995, he then joined the Center Pompidou in 2003 and in 2010 was promoted to head the Cabinet of Photography at Center Pompidou. While at Center Pompidou Bajac curated various exhibitions on modern and contemporary photography, he notably organized "William Klein" (2005), "The Subversion of Images: Surrealism, Photography, Film" (2009), and "Here is Paris: Modernities Photographic, 1920-1950- The Christian Bouqueret Collection "(2012). 

Bajac 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: Image fisherman (2012). He is also the author of a history of photography in three volumes (Discoveries 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.