Chris Dercon: From Volksbühne to Cartier

opinion cultural manager

From the Volksbühne to Cartier – the crazy career of Chris Dercon

As of 1:29 p.m | Reading time: 2 minutes

Chris Dercon becomes head of a corporate foundation

Quelle: Getty Images

Chris Dercon was driven out of Berlin. Paris granted him asylum. As head of the Grand Palais, he brought Art Basel to the French capital. Why is he finally changing sides?

VFive years ago, Chris Dercon was recruited from the Tate Modern in London as a kind of regicide by the then Secretary of State for Culture, Tim Renner, and sent to the Volksbühne in Berlin. The order: break up the conspired troops. Instead, the culture manager ran into the open knife and, after a tough fight as a capitalist traitor, was chased away – to Paris.

Where he actually became a turbo-capitalist: He mediated between Macron and the Saudi princes in the case of the $450 million picture “Salvator Mundi”, boasted for the gigantic blue-chip show for Anselm Kiefer, to finally win the award of the Parisians To launch an art fair at Art Basel, which is taking place for the first time this weekend as Paris+ – and means the end of the traditional Fiac. The verdict of the French: murder of the queen.

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In Paris, however, Dercon is just a well-oiled cog in the machine, used to expand the influence of private collections, like Louis Vuitton in the Bois de Boulogne or Pinault in the Bourse de Commerce. Emma Lavigne has also just left her post as President of the Palais de Tokyo to become General Manager of the Pinault Collection. It is only slightly less far from the Palais to Pinault than from the Volksbühne to the Cartier Foundation.

Because that’s where Chris Dercon has now hired: in the world of cultural sponsorship by luxury brands, which of course is also prominently represented at Art Basel. How the museums want to counter this billionaire competition is questionable, especially if they continue to do what the Louvre did: For the Paris+, the museum could not think of anything more than an exhibition on the “History of Still Life”.

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