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Magician of artistic revelation
To create, promote, share, enlighten, guide... He or she has the noble task of opening our eyes to the world. Behind the scenes of the major exhibitions that punctuate the news and our calendars, a three-part series focusing on three influential figures...
Marie-Charlotte Calafat, appointed scientific and collections director of the Mucem, since 2024.
At the crossroads of art history and anthropology
In the labyrinthine corridors of this essential temple of European and Mediterranean civilizations, her discreet, gentle presence embodies a constant energy. From the collections departments to research and conservation, she oversees everything, consulting, meeting, proposing, and engaging… In 2025, the state museum experienced its highest attendance in 10 years, with 1,4 million visitors. The permanent exhibition "Mediterraneans, Inventions and Representations" alone (the most visited of the year, with 272,000 people), presented in several installments, is slated to be renewed until… 2030! It will thus be regularly enriched with new masterpieces and rare pieces recently acquired or loaned, opening new avenues for exploring the Mediterranean, from Greco-Roman antiquity to the present day, including the colonial period: so many multiple and imagined visions, juxtaposed with contemporary works evoking today's challenges. "In the autumn of 2027, the tour will begin in Rotterdam, a Dutch province in South Holland, with a true rewriting of the project centered around its own collections. Rediscovering what has shaped us since the dawn of time, at the very heart of our Mediterranean civilizations."
The strong relationship with the Centre Pompidou, currently closed for renovations, will generate a Constellations program spread across several French museums from June 2027 to January 2028, where folk art will interact with the modernity of iconic pieces. In this Upside Down World, André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, and Wassily Kandinsky will circulate, inviting a reversal of perspective, "exploring traces of creation, hidden gestures, the invisible face of artworks—what we never look at, yet which reveals so much about creation. We must break down barriers, shift the boundaries!" This experiment, conducted with Xavier Rey, director of the Musée National d'Art Moderne, sees artworks turned inside out in a space of revelation, invention, and subversion, leading to a rethinking of the museum itself. In her very busy schedule, Marie Charlotte Calafat effortlessly blends past and present, popular appeal and the luxury of extraordinary pieces, "to open new paths." Her inquisitive, exhilarating, and insatiable culture will continue to enchant us!
His major engagements at the Mucem as Exhibition Curator: “Fashion Folklore, popular costumes and haute couture”, 2023-2024; “René Perrot, my poor heart is an owl”, 2023-2024; “Shared passion, from Basquiat to Edith Piaf, the Lambert Collection at the Mucem”, 2024.
Marie-Josée Linou, chief curator of heritage, director of the Decorative Arts department of the Museums of Marseille (Château Borély, Grobet-Labadié museum), since 2017.
Bringing together heritages in a jewel-like museum
After 30 years at the Mandet Museum in Riom, Auvergne, where she enriched the art and archaeology collections with rare pieces of goldsmithing and major works of contemporary design, this great lover of the decorative arts has found her home in Marseille. Facing the sea, in the Château Borély, whose walls tell the story of an elegant 18th-century country house.eShe has since left her mark. In this original setting, now her everyday home, the gilded salon, library, bedrooms, and chapel serve as a backdrop, nestled among the many elegant rooms, for a stroll where earthenware from the great local manufacturers, furniture, glass, tapestries, objets d'art, and 18th-century fashion mingle.e century to the present day. "The complete renovation carried out in 2013 paved the way for permanent contemporary works that are part of the museum's journey with a real commitment: Mathieu Lehanneur, the acclaimed designer of the Paris 2024 Olympic cauldron, Hubert Le Gall and Laurence Aëgerter have boldly challenged the established norms."
She thus effortlessly followed the societal trajectory of this historical monument, which tells the story of the art of living, of finding shelter, furnishing, dining, and dressing, evoking family ties and drawing upon the culture of the past to transcend the everyday. "Building bridges by blending genres, balancing everything so that this place overlooking one of Marseille's favorite parks encourages strolling, curiosity, the rediscovery of heritage, and reinvented tastes and practices. While the Château Borély, now a museum, is part of the landscape, each generation now lingers there."
By choosing to juxtapose different eras and styles, and by showcasing the wealth of collections regularly brought out of storage, she also highlighted her growing interest in the pool of local and, more broadly, Mediterranean talent, through the exhibition "Infinitely Blue": an event that, throughout 2025, welcomed over 44 visitors, offering a fresh perspective on this color inextricably linked to the history of our shores. This focus led her to explore the vibrant pool of laureates of the Maison Mode Méditerranée Endowment Fund, bearers of memory and builders of tomorrow. Everything is an opportunity for revelation: "The sheer poetry of a small 000th-century porcelain cup"e "It delights me! You only need to follow the thread of the object for our age-old arts and traditions to emerge through a material, a technique, a function… Therein lies the marvelous magic of the decorative arts."
His major past and upcoming events: Sophie Calle (2019), “Man Ray and Fashion (2019-2020), “Fantasized Asia” (2023), “The Big Swim or How to Dress (Un)dress Well in the Sun” (2024) And from May 8, 2028 to April 25, 2027, “Art Nouveau-Art Deco/Marseille at the Heart of Styles” will highlight this pivotal period between these two major currents of modernity.
Andy Neyrotti, head of the Study, conservation and dissemination of collections department at the Réattu Museum.
Photography, a universal mirror.
A graduate in art history who fell in love with Arles, he has, since arriving at the Réattu in 2008, confirmed his insatiable thirst for memorable encounters at this magnetic, emblematic place in the city… In 2026, the writing of his new scientific and cultural project took time for reflection to redefine its DNA: “In the blue vessel of the Museum of Ancient Arles, archaeology; in the immersion of the Arlaten identity, Provençal ethnography; in our Museum of Ancient Art, memory combined with modern and contemporary art. To preserve, enrich, experiment, explore new territories with the supreme luxury of the freedom to constantly reinvent the museum with one objective: that the visitor enters the collections!”
Around the new route of this "Re-attu Reinvented" (until March 29, 2026), it was necessary Reflecting on portraiture, representing the body, reinventing landscapes, rethinking images. “Our strength lies in our collection and, of course, our photographic holdings, whose age, quality, and coherence are beyond question. We are sitting on a treasure. Everything is there, even the physical print. What we bring in, what is acquired, never leaves again, hence the imperative need to protect and regularly exhibit the works, while being mindful of their fragility and, for some, the need for restoration. With some 10 prints, we are now advocating for a true conservation center suitable for the two essential formats: exploring the diverse forms of living artists, including “fine art” photography, through the visibility of donations and acquisitions; while preserving the memory of the Rencontres since the 000s and 80s and, with it, the enduring legacy of deceased artists. Lucien Clergue is a perfect example. The heritage is extraordinary.” Retrospectives, thematic exhibitions—photography is everywhere, replacing, through its transversality and international reach, extensions such as video and sound art.
Between the walls of the Grand Priory of the Order of Malta, the primary material for the exhibitions and installations, the light and shadow of painters Jacques Réattu (who set up his studio there in an intimate setting overlooking the Rhône) and Antoine Raspal, the visits of Picasso, Alechinsky, and Georges Rousse, the implacable presence of the activist Lucien Clergue, and the influence of Christian Lacroix, whose drawings are expected this summer from July 4 to October 4, 2026, all play a part. These fascinating juxtapositions between walls, courtyards, loggias, and the chapel offer something for anyone who hasn't already succumbed, over the seasons, to the ineffable and age-old allure of the museum…
His major past and upcoming events: “The Picassos of Arles, invitation to Christian Lacroix”, in 2012; “Les Clergues d’Arles”, 2014-2015; “Dare to Photography”, 2015; Antoine Raspal retrospective, 2017-2018; “Portraits – The Florence and Damien Bachelot Collection”, 2023…
