Sylvain Amic, the director of Paris’s Musée d’Orsay, has died. The cause was heart failure. Amic was only appointed to the role in April 2024, moving from an advisory position at the French Ministry of Culture. He was seen as a progressive, who brought 3.7 million visitors to the museum and instituted a series of largescale regional outreach programmes.
Amic previously lead the Musée Fabre in Montpellier, and the Museums of Rouen, the latter an umbrella structure he created to manage 11 institutions in the Normandy city.
The French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute; ‘Sylvain Amic wanted everyone to be able to access the marvels of art, from Manet to Soulages. He understood the force of universal emancipation of our culture.’
Amic was born in Dakar, Senegal and he taught at a French school in Banjul, Gambia. This early experience in Africa made him a strong proponent of restitution, later championing the return of treasures looted from the continent in the colonial era.
