Alain Seban

Born in Toulouse, Alain Seban graduated from the École Polytechnique (X83), the ENSAE ParisTech and the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris.

Alain Seban was made a "maître des requêtes" at the Council of State in 1994, and appointed to Minister of Culture Philippe Douste-Blazy's Private Office in 1995[3] within which he was responsible for museums, heritage, architecture, archives, legal counsel, and copyright law.

[15] He focused on providing the centre with a strategic plan which was approved in the autumn of 2007 and was built on President Georges Pompidou's founding vision: "the ambition to create an interface between the community and creation, with the conviction that a nation which opens up to the art of its time is more creative, more agile, stronger".

[22] Under his leadership, the centre's project of creating a new exhibition space devoted to French artists in the basement of the Palais de Tokyo was turned down by Minister for Culture and Communication Christine Albanel, who favoured the extension of the already existing contemporary art space,[23] nevertheless the number of visitors coming to the Centre spectacularly increased, reaching 3.6 million in 2011 (+40% between 2007 and 2011),[24] notably thanks to large exhibitions such as those devoted to Kandisky, Calder, Soulages, Lucian Freud or Mondrian/de Stijl, and to a significant increase of its own resources (+50% between 2007 and 2009).

[27] During his second tenure, he implements a concept of satellite institutions, set in existing venues in France or abroad, with a limited in time cooperation with the Pompidou in Paris.