Assistant Curator at Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain
By Clémentine Debrosse
For six months, between 3rd January and 30th June 2023, I was assistant curator at Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris. Fondation Cartier is a French private cultural foundation which opened in 1984 and which will be opening a new building in the centre of Paris in 2025 next to the musée du Louvre.
I first applied to do my placement at Fondation Cartier because of the long-lasting work they have been doing with contemporary Indigenous artists since the beginning of the 2000s. Few institutions dedicated to contemporary art have been doing such work in Europe and it was both interesting and important for me to have a professional experience in a foundation with a global outreach.
The opening of the future Fondation Cartier led me to research their collection for future projects and development as well as receive training on the use of the Fondation’s new database. Thanks to my previous professional experiences and the various academic research I conducted throughout my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, I was able to contribute my expertise to the various topics that were assigned to me.
During my time at Fondation Cartier, I took part in two different exhibition projects: The Great Animal Orchestra: Bernie Krause & United Visual Artists (TGAO) at the Exploratorium in San Francisco (USA) and Siamo Foresta at Triennale in Milan (Italy). For TGAO exhibition, I worked alongside the teams of Cartier International and Cartier North America which are cultural branches that facilitate the various cultural projects initiated by Fondation Cartier worldwide. While my work on this exhibition was remote, I was able to coordinate between the Fondation and the different Cartier branches to ensure the project unravelled as planned.
The Siamo Foresta exhibition however was a project I was able to follow much more. From the gathering of written material for the exhibition texts and exhibition album, the management of the exhibition’s content on the Fondation’s database, the coordination of several film subtitling to the coordination of the dedicated webpage content, I worked on many aspects of the exhibition alongside teams at Fondation Cartier, as well as Cartier International and Cartier South-East Europe. At the end of my placement in June 2023, I was able to travel to Milan with the team of Fondation Cartier for the opening of the exhibition. Being at Triennale for Siamo Foresta was a way to see the fruition of six month’s work as well as meet with many of the artists and people who were involved in the exhibition.
Over my six months at Fondation Cartier, I met with museum professionals, artists and created great relationships with my colleagues. I always felt welcomed, trusted and respected in my work environment which was all the more fulfilling and motivating to give these projects my all. On top of bringing me incredible professional experience and certainty about wanting to have a career as a museum professional whether it will be in a museum, an art gallery or a private cultural foundation, this placement was also a tremendous opportunity for me to reflect on my PhD journey and start anew when going back to my research.