Director of the French Sculpture Census, Laure de Margerie, introduces her recently published book, French Sculpture: An American Passion. De Margerie unfolds the story of how French sculptures in a great variety of genres and styles came to the United States and uncovers the politicians, collectors, dealers, decorators, curators, and professors who were instrumental in this trade. De Margerie examines how the presence of French sculpture follows the close relations between our two nations, and shares the role and meaning of French sculpture in America’s ever-changing society.

About Laure de Margerie

Laure de Margerie is the Director of the French Sculpture Census, the first comprehensive catalogue of French sculpture (1500-1960) in American public collections. The illustrated bilingual website frenchsculpture.org, hosted by the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, presents in rich detail the breadth, quality and diversity of nearly 500 years of French sculpture collected in the United States.

De Margerie was head of the Sculpture Archives at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris from 1978 through 2009. She was part of the team who installed the sculpture collection at the opening of the museum in 1986 and co-authored the collection catalogue. She curated several exhibitions: La Danse de Carpeaux (Paris and Valenciennes, 1989), Drawings by Carpeaux (Paris, 1991-92), Carpeaux peintre (Paris, Valenciennes, and Amsterdam, 1999/2000), and Charles Cordier (1827-1905), Ethnographic Sculptor (Paris, Quebec City, and New York, Dahesh Museum, 2004/05).

She was awarded a fellowship at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown in 2000/01 and was the Sculpture and Decorative Arts Department guest scholar at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, CA in the Fall of 2011. She is also a member of the Vetting Committee for Sculpture at the international art fair TEFAF New York.