Lafayette Anticipations, the closely watched Paris exhibition space, has announced that Clément Delépine, the director of Art Basel Paris, will be the institution’s next director.
He succeeds Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel, who has been the director for the past six years and “has chosen to embark on a new personal and professional challenge,” according to a release.
Delépine will start in his role on November 17, a few weeks after this year’s edition of Art Basel Paris, which opens to VIPs on October 22. Art Basel said that a search for new director for the Paris fair is currently underway.
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Delépine will be tasked with plotting “the next stage” of Lafayette Anticipations, which is a nonprofit foundation for the iconic department store Galeries Lafayette, per the release. Since its founding in 2012, the organization has become known for its ambitious exhibition program, spotlighting a high-profile roster of international artists. Recent shows have been dedicated to Martine Syms, Issy Wood, Cyprien Gaillard, Martin Margiela, and Wu Tsang. It now operates out of a 19th-century industrial building in Le Marais, which opened in 2018 after a renovation by Rem Koolhaas and OMA.
In a statement, Guillaume Houzé, the president of Lafayette Anticipations and the great-grandson of one of Galeries Lafayette’s founders, said, “I would like to thank Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel for everything she has done leading the Fondation over the past six years and I appreciate her energy, vision and hard work, which shaped our programming and bolstered the unique place Lafayette Anticipations occupies in the Parisian and international cultural landscape. The arrival of Clément Delépine represents the start of an exciting new chapter for Lafayette Anticipations in support of contemporary creation.”
Delépine was named the director of Art Basel Paris in March 2022, a few months after Art Basel announced that it would launch a French fair after nabbing the October dates at the Grand Palais from longtime French fair, FIAC. His appointment came when Art Basel had announced that the new fair would be called “Paris+, par Art Basel”—a name it has since ditched.
The “+,” or plus, was meant to indicate that his iteration of Art Basel would be more ambitious than the others it mounts in Hong Kong, Miami Beach, and Basel, Switzerland, with a citywide program that create a “dynamic dialogue between its cultural industries—from fashion and design to film and music,” according to a release at the time. Those ambitions never quite panned out, though many of Paris’s top institutions do mount their most important shows when the fair opens. (That might also simply be due to its general timing in mid-October.)
“I warmly congratulate Clément on his appointment as director of Lafayette Anticipations,” Art Basel CEO Noah Horowitz said in a statement to ARTnews. “His spirited leadership and vision have been central to establishing Art Basel Paris as such a strong fixture on the international stage in just three years, and we wish him only the best as he embarks on his next chapter. We are fully focused on working with Clément and the team to execute a stellar Paris edition next month, and continuing to deliver for our clients on a global basis beyond this.”
Prior to Art Basel Paris, Delépine led Paris Internationale, an independent fair that was founded by a group of galleries in 2015, from 2016 to 2021. He previously worked as a director in New York’s Bortolami Gallery and before that at the Swiss Institute, also in New York.
“I feel incredibly fortunate to join Lafayette Anticipations and take over from Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel, whose vision I have admired over the past six years,” Delépine said in a statement. “I have considerable affection for this institution and I am honoured by the trust Guillaume Houzé has placed in me. I am looking forward to further affirming its unique positioning on the French and international art scene. It has been a privilege to direct Art Basel Paris and I would like to express my immense gratitude to Noah Horowitz, Vincenzo de Bellis and all the teams at Art Basel for their trust and support.”