Why a conservator shouldn't be... a conservator.
Over the course of its history, the material work of art undergoes a series of transformations, both as a result of external factors (format modifications, vandalism, accidents, historical context...), and internally, linked to the evolution of the materials used. In the case of old paintings, this process is often approached solely from the angle of inevitable deterioration, distancing us from a fantasized origin that would be the moment of completion, and which should - as far as possible - be preserved. The terms "conservator" and "restorer" refer back to this conception, based on a fixed temporality, looking primarily to an irretrievably lost past.
Sébastien Allard proposes to take a different view, by positively considering the material evolution of works, not as a more or less slow degradation, but as the mark of their vitalism, as successive metamorphoses that the curator must accompany, or even anticipate. This is an essential point that implies a radical change of position, as curators must better integrate the sedimentation of temporalities, both that of the work and our own, and assume the dialectic between our own historicity and the state of the work at a given moment. It's no longer a question of trying - somewhat vainly - to fix an origin, to re-establish an achrony, but of showing the relationship that a given society, at a given time, has with the works of the past, and the way in which they can still speak to us today.
A graduate of the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris and Conservateur Général du Patrimoine, Sébastien Allard is Director of the Paintings Department at the Musée du Louvre. A nineteenth-century scholar, he is particularly interested in Romanticism and the work of Delacroix, Ingres and Corot. He has curated numerous international exhibitions, including, in 2018, the major retrospective devoted to Eugène Delacroix at the Musée du Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and the exhibition "Corot. Le peintre et ses modèles" at the Musée Marmottan Monet. He is currently curating "Naples in Paris. The Louvre invites the Musée de Capodimonte" and is preparing an exhibition devoted to Jacques-Louis David. His book, co-written with M.-Cl. Chaudonneret, Le Suicide de Gros. Les Peintres de l'Empire et la génération romantique won the 2011 Académie française essay prize. He is currently working on a book on biographical issues in artists' work. Encouraging the presence of contemporary art and the performing arts at the Louvre, in 2010 he curated Patrice Chéreau's invitation to the Louvre and, in 2022, provided scientific advice for Forêt by Anne-Teresa De Keersmaeker and Némo Flouret.
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Penser le Présent is produced with the support of Société Générale.
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