Guy Cogeval, in Paris, in 2008. BRUNO FRET FOR LE MONDE
"And when he crossed the bridge, the phantoms came to meet him." Guy Cogeval, who served as president of the Musée d'Orsay from 2008 to 2017, loved to repeat this line from F.W. Murnau's 1922 film Nosferatu. Today, it sounds like an epitaph. Death claimed him on Thursday, November 13, in Paris, at the age of 70, following an acute pneumonia.
Born in Paris in 1955, Cogeval was a free spirit and nonconformist, often unpredictable, and stood out in the refined world of curators with his flair, his flamboyant ties, and his outspokenness. Madly in love with the 19th century but just as comfortable in the 21st, passionate about both opera and techno, he detested blandness and monotony.
At 17, Cogeval dreamed of theater before being swept up by art history. After a stay at the Villa Médicis in Rome, where he wrote a thesis on the history of scenography between 1870 and 1914, the young curator started out at the film section of the Musée d'Orsay, before joining Lyon's Museum of Fine Arts and later the culture department of the Louvre in Paris.
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