Nicolas Bourriaud has been ousted from his role as director of the French institution Montpellier Contemporain (MoCo). During a board meeting on Tuesday, it was announced that curator Numa Hambursin would replace him as director.
The news comes after months of growing political tensions between Bourriaud and the city’s new mayor, Michaël Delafosse. Fusing the previously separate Montpellier art school, its local contemporary art centre La Panacée and the Hôtel des Collections, MoCo was relaunched as one big structure in the summer of 2019 as the flagship project of the former mayor Philippe Saurel, with the clear aim of putting the city on the international art map. Since his election, Delafosse has been overtly critical of Bourriaud’s leadership and vision for the institution, pointing to an ‘extravagant’ budget (€6m), used towards exhibitions he deems too elitist.
Bourriaud has rebutted those accusations, pointing to external circumstances affecting attendance (the Yellow Vests protests which forced the institution to close repeatedly, followed by the pandemic) while putting the budget in perspective (the €6m are to be used across the three arms of the institution, including an art school). Back in November, 1,400 signed a petition defending Bourriaud and his programming, while on Tuesday, art students took it to the streets to protest the application of Hambursin.
Hambursin was one of three candidates presenting their proposal for the institution, alongside Ashok Adicéam, former head of Yuz Museum Shanghai and Céline Kopp, director of Marseille’s Triangle art centre (Bourriaud also symbolically reapplied for the role, but the board did not retain his proposal back in March). The decision to appoint Hambursin was further criticised by some, for not quite meeting the board’s requirement of a two-thirds majority, getting 12 votes out of 19. Hambursin is said to be a close friend of Delafosse’s, and his proposal to the board is thought to embody the mayor’s more ‘populist’ vision for the institution. A curator and art critic, Hambursin is currently artistic director of the Fondation GGL Helenis, a private contemporary art foundation exhibiting works in a five-star hotel in Montpellier. From 2010 to 2017, he was the artistic director of the Carré Sainte-Anne de Montpellier, and in 2018, he joined an advisory committee for the development of contemporary art in the city of Cannes.
