Emma Lavigne, president of the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, has been named chief executive officer of the Pinault Collection, which is headquartered in the same city. Lavigne is just two years into her job at the Palais de Tokyo, France’s largest noncollecting museum of contemporary art, where she was the first woman to lead that institution since its founding in 2002. She will take up her post at the Pinault Collection, which oversees the art collection of French billionaire François Pinault, on November 1, succeeding Jean-Jacques Aillagon, who will stay on as an adviser to the collection.

In her new role, Lavigne will govern the Bourse de Commerce, Paris, which opened to the public this past May following multiple delays; her first task there will be to arrange a hanging, likely next winter. Lavigne will also manage the Punta della Dogana and the Palazzo Grassi, both of which are in Venice. Bruno Racine will remain as director of the Venetian institutions.

Formerly the director of France’s Centre Pompidou-Metz, from 2014 to 2019, and the curator of the French pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale of the 2017 Biennale de Lyon, Lavigne is widely respected and is a vocal presence on the local and global arts stage. Earlier this year, following a span of months saw the Palais de Tokyo hit especially hard by the continuing Covid-19 crisis, she joined her fellow museum chiefs across France in lobbying to be allowed to open, even in a limited capacity. More than a year prior, she dismissed Bernard Chenebault, president of Amis du Palais de Tokyo, after he made threatening remarks on Facebook about the then-sixteen-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg.

At present, there is no word as to who will succeed Lavigne at the Palais de Tokyo.