Guy Cogeval is the President of the Musee d'Orsay in Paris.
Education:
He studied art history at the Sorbonne, Paris, where he received his M.A. in 1981 and continued in the doctoral program until 1985. In 1985, he was awarded first place in the highly prestigious Concours des conservateurs des musees nationaux de France.
Background:
Prior to this, Cogeval was the director of The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from 1998 to 2008. In this position, he was responsible for artistic leadership and executive management of one of Canada's oldest and most distinguished art museums. There, he curated or oversaw such critically acclaimed exhibitions as The Triumph of the Baroque (with the NGA, Washington), Hitchcock and Art (with the Centre Pompidou, Paris), Picasso Erotique (with the Musee Picasso, Paris) and Richelieu: Art and Power (with the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne).
Prior to becoming director of The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Guy Cogeval was director of the Musee National des monuments francais, in Paris (1992–1998), where he was named Conservateur en chef du patrimoine (1996). He was for twelve years professor of art history (nineteenth century) at the Ecole du Louvre. Previous positions include curator in the education department at the Musee du Louvre, curator at the Musee des beaux-arts de Lyon, and curator-in-training at the Musee d'Orsay. Earlier, he was awarded a fellowship at the Academie de France a Rome, Villa Medici (1982–1984), where he was a Prix de Rome scholar.
During his years in France, Mr. Cogeval was curator of varied exhibitions, such as Debussy e il simbolismo (Rome), A New 19th Century (Brooklyn, New York, and Dallas), Vuillard (Lyon, Barcelona), Maurice Denis: A Retrospective (Lyon, Amsterdam, Cologne) and Renaissance Architecture (Paris).
