Olivier Gabet
Olivier Gabet, Director of the Department of Decorative Arts at the Musée du Louvre since 2022, is a graduate of the École nationale des Chartes. In 2002, he joined the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris as Heritage curator of furniture. He then joined the Musée d'Orsay as Heritage curator, while also teaching at the École du Louvre. From 2008 to 2013, he participated in the Louvre Abu Dhabi project as Heritage curator responsible for decorative arts, then as deputy scientific director. He took up the position of director of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 2013 and then became deputy director general of the MAD in 2019. Author of several books on decorative arts, including Japonismes in 2014, he has curated several exhibitions, including Christian Dior, couturier des rêves in 2017 and Luxes in 2020, as well as the exhibition Louvre Couture, objets d'art, objets de mode at the Musée du Louvre in 2025.
September 2025Special Report
OBJECTS WATCH US GO BY
We often imagine that museum curators, exhibition curators and collectors collect works of art and everyday objects. But if we move away from this somewhat phantasmagorical vision of accumulation, from a logic of bringing back the missing object, of metaphorically bringing back the phantom limb, we can open up another perspective. We are merely passing through, while the objects remain. It's the objects that watch us go by.
