« La grande dame des musées ». Françoise Cachin et la muséologie en France de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle

Françoise Cachin (1936-2011) was a key figure in French museology in the second half of the 20th century. First director of the Musée d'Orsay (1986), she went on to become the first woman director of the Direction des Musées de France (1994). The reconstruction of Françoise Cachin's career coincides with key milestones in French cultural and museum policies. The research shows Françoise Cachin's commitment to the preservation of collections and museum spaces, and paints a portrait of a promoter of culture, of an active interlocutor with cultural institutions. Thanks to unpublished material from France's national archives, and, above all, unpublished personal archives, it is now possible to understand what contribution a figure of this gauge was able to make to optimise conservation practices for the artistic heritage of French museums.