After five years at the helm of the arts programme for the Monnaie de Paris—the Paris mint—the Italian curator Chiara Parisi is leaving her position and will be replaced by Camille Morineau. A graduate of the prestigious École normale supérieure and a former student at the Institut national du patrimoine (National heritage institute), Morineau has organised exhibitions such as Niki de Saint Phalle at the Grand Palais (2014-15), and as Roy Lichtenstein (2013), Gerhard Richter: Panorama (2012) and Yves Klein: Body, Colour, Immaterial (2006) at the Centre Pompidou. Her mission will be to “present more French artists and female artists, but also attract a wider audience”, the museum says.
Presenting more female artists should not pose a problem for Morineau, who founded the non-profit organisation Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions (Aware), which aims to re-integrate 20th-century women artists into art history. She is also the author of Artistes femmes: de 1905 à nos jours (Women artists from 1905 to the present) and organised the Pompidou’s exhibition elles@centrepompidou in 2009.
Founded in 864, the Monnaie de Paris has sought to open itself up to contemporary art on the occasion of its 1,150th birthday. In September 2014, John Baldessari’s installation, Your Name in Lights, projected onto the quai de Conti in Paris, was a preview of the programming developed by Chiara Parisi. The first exhibition, Paul McCarthy: Chocolate Factory (25 October 2015-4 January 2015) was praised by critics internationally and was followed by Marcel Broodthaers: Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles (18 April -5 July 2015), Take Me I’m Yours, curated with Christian Boltanski and Hans Ulrich Obrist (16 September-8 November 2015), Jannis Kounellis (11 March-30 April 2016), Merci Raymond by Bertarand Lavier (27 May-17 July 2016) and finally, the current show, Maurizio Cattelan: Not Afraid of Love (until 8 January 2017).