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As director of the Palais Galliera for the last eight years, Olivier Saillard elevated the city of Paris’s fashion museum to must-visit status, thanks to programming that encompassed everything from performance pieces by Tilda Swinton to the first Azzedine Alaïa retrospective in the city. So the fashion community was stunned last summer when Mr. Saillard abruptly announced he was quitting in January to become artistic director of J.M. Weston, the French luxury men’s shoe company.
A guessing game about who might take his place followed. In December, the answer was revealed: a relatively unknown Spaniard named Miren Arzalluz.
A political historian by training and Basque by birth, the 39-year-old Ms. Arzalluz had honed her curating skills for eight years as the head of the Cristóbal Balenciaga Foundation in Getaria, Spain. She said she was hesitant to apply for the Galliera post (she had been happy in her most recent job, as director of the Etxepare Basque Institute, a cultural center in San Sebastián).
But she ultimately pursued it because, she said, “this job was really going back to my thing.”
So what is her thing? Here is her explanation:
How did you end up in a museum, if you studied politics?
I studied history, worked at a British think tank, earned my master’s in comparative politics at the London School of Economics. It was just after 9/11. The world was in such turmoil. I started going to the Victoria & Albert Museum for fashion exhibitions. Then I remember walking into the National Portrait Gallery bookshop and seeing a whole section on fashion history. It was a revelation. When you study history, it’s to be a social or political historian. But fashion? That was something that I had never dreamt of. I went to the Courtauld Institute of Art in Somerset House for a master’s in history of dress, and fell in love with the subject. I thought: “Oh, this is what I want to do.”
Why do you think fashion museums and exhibitions have become such hot tickets?
Fashion is a creative expression with which people find themselves much more identified — maybe feel closer — than with other creative expressions, like contemporary art. Because they have an intimate relationship with clothes, they feel they can have an informed opinion. In fashion museums, we always try to find a way to transmit certain ideas about what we are exhibiting: the history, the cultural context in which these items were created, the designer and the spectacle — because spectacle is so intrinsic to fashion. You have to balance the content, the rigor and the scientific approach with the spectacle.
Is fashion an art form?
Oh, the debate! I think some fashion objects can be very close to being art. But fashion is so much more: It’s a cultural expression, a political statement, an echo of its time. Yes, there are certain designers who have had a conceptual approach to fashion and have come out with creations that can be compared to art — like Balenciaga, Vionnet, Charles James and Alaïa. But is fashion art? That’s a big statement. I don’t think we will reach a conclusion soon on that. Either way, it’s not a reason not to show fashion in museums.
What’s first on the agenda for the Galliera?
Olivier explored different ways of showing fashion, like performances or exhibiting outside the museum in places like the Palace of Versailles, and this should all be continued. But there are other challenges that I inherit, like creating a permanent exhibition, which is something the general public has demanded for a long time. After the Martin Margiela show this spring, we close the museum for two years to rehabilitate the basement and create rooms to show pieces from the museum’s extraordinary historic archives. Unlike the temporary exhibits, the permanent collection will have a more generalist approach to the history of fashion since the 18th century, and it will be constantly renewed to keep it dynamic. So we have to plan that, as well as my first show, once the museum reopens.
What do you do when you aren’t working?
I arrived in Paris in the first week of January, and found an apartment near Place de République, which is a fun part of town. I spend my free time visiting museums and exhibitions. I saw the “Picasso 1932: Année Érotique,” at the Musée Picasso just the other day and I adored that. I loved the concept of concentrating on one year, and I thought the erotic approach was interesting. As you can see, I only like to do things related to my work.
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