France, just 30 years old becomes director of major 80,000-visitor museum

To become director of an 80,000-visitor museum at the age of only 30: In France it is possible. It happens in Sars-Poteries, a small town of 1,500 inhabitants in the Nord département (a few kilometers from the Belgian border), where one of the country’s most flourishing glass industries developed between the 19th and 20th centuries, and which today survives in a more limited artisanal production. The town is home to the Musée du Verre (MusVerre), the “Museum of Glass,” one of the most important of its kind in France, capable of attracting some 80,000 visitors each year, and where 800 pieces of bousillé glass , a typical Sars-Poteries tradition (these are works made from fragments of glass), produced between 1801 and 1937, two thousand pieces of semi-industrial production, and 750 contemporary glass works are on display. The museum, founded in 1967 by Louis Mériaux, was revolutionized in 2016 when it changed its location, moving to a building that has 3,400 square meters, 1,000 of which are reserved for exhibition, and cost 14.9 million euros to the state, which financed the work.

The Musée du Verre now has a new director, a very young one: she is Éléonore Peretti, born in 1990, originally from Burgundy. She had been acting co-director of the MusVerre since July 2019 along with Laurence Thibaut-Matton, and now she is therefore moving on to direct it herself. Hers is a very rapid career: she trained at the Université Lumière in Lyon, where she obtained a bachelor’s degree in art history in 2011, and then went on to specialize in conservation, culture, and heritage at the “Denis Diderot” Institute of the University of Burgundy in Dijon (it is an institute specializing in higher education in the cultural professions). Éléonore Peretti’s work experience began in 2012 with an internship at the Musées de Sens and then another stint at the Musée de la Vie Bourguignonne in Dijon, after which she had her first major experience at Henri Matisse’s Maison Familiale in Bohain-en-Vermandois, the house where Henri Matisse spent his childhood, which became a museum in 2008: Peretti became its director when she was just 23 years old, leading it from 2013 to 2017, the latter date of her move to MusVerre, where she served as head of public services before moving to interim co-directorship.

Éléonore Peretti told the French newspaper Le Journal des Arts that among her goals will be to expand the museum’s spaces to enable it to pursue more activities that can engage contemporary artists and aspiring glass artisans. However, the new director is also aware that her appointment comes at a very delicate time, as museums are also closed in France due to the Covid-19 emergency. “For several months,” she said, “the health situation has forced us to readjust completely. We have to keep this creative spirit and continue to address our audiences directly.”

Pictured: Éléonore Peretti

France, just 30 years old becomes director of major 80,000-visitor museum

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