Alexia Fabre will be curator of the Seventeenth Biennale of Lyon, which will take place from September 2024 to January 2025. Chief curator of heritage, Fabre directed from 2005 to 2022 the MAC VAL, museum of contemporary art in the department of Val- de-Marne, in Vitry-sur-Seine, France. She left in January 2022 to become the first woman to hold the position of director of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
“I am very receptive to the values defended by Alexia and her commitment to artists,” said Biennale director Isabelle Bertolotti. “She has gained wide recognition for her dedication to bringing art to a wide audience in a territory, both in museums and in urban spaces. She has done exemplary work within the contemporary art museum of Val-de-Marne (MAC VAL) by supporting artists over the long term, but also in essentially event-driven projects, such as curating Nuit Blanche in Paris for two occasions.
Trained at the Ecole du Louvre and the Institut National du Patrimoine, Fabre began her career as director of the Musée Départemental de Gap in 1993. In 1998, she was recruited to contribute to the development of the MAC VAL, where she was also interested both to diversity and to equality. as on building the museum’s art collection from the 1950s to the present day. By the time she left the institution, female artists were represented on an equal footing with men.
With Frank Lamy, in charge of temporary exhibitions at the MAC VAL, Fabre ensured in 2009 and 2011 the artistic co-direction of Nuit Blanche Paris. She was guest curator of Manif d’Art – La Biennale de Québec in 2017; in 2019, she co-curated the exhibition “Moon, from real to imaginary journeysat the Grand Palais, Paris.
