Quentin Bajac is leaving the coveted role of chief curator of photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art for a new job in Paris – director of the Jeu de Paume. He succeeds Marta Gili at the Jeu de Paume, who announced in June that she would resign as the museum’s director after 12 years in the role. MoMA has stated that it will “immediately launch a search for a new chief curator of photography”, a role first made famous by John Szarkowski from 1962 to 1991.
Bajac joined MoMA in January 2013, and in his time at the institution has worked on shows such as Stephen Shore’s mid-career retrospective, and a group show looking at studio photography. Prior to MoMA he was based in Paris, however, where he joined the Musée d’Orsay in 1995 as an associate curator in the photography department, before moving to the Centre Pompidou to become a curator in 2003, then chief curator in 2007. While at the Centre Pompidou, he spearheaded exhibitions on artists such as Jacques-Henri Lartigue, William Klein, and Miroslav Tichy, and more.
Bajac has published three books – the three-volume Découvertes Gallimard series on the history of photography (2000–10); Parr by Parr: Discussions with a Promiscuous Photographer (2011); and Robert Doisneau: Pêcheur d’images (2012). Bajac was born in 1965, and studied at the l’Institut national du patrimoine.
