Simon Baker — Director of the MEP
Simon Baker has been Director of MEP since May 2018. He was formerly Senior Curator for International Art (Photography) at the Tate Modern in London since 2009. Prior to this, he was Associate Professor of Art History at Nottingham University. He has published widely on both photography and art history, including the monograph George Condo : Painting Reconfigured (Thames and Hudson, 2015), often specializing in surrealism and its legacies in contemporary practice. Recent publications include texts for works on Coco Capitan, Julie Curtiss, Hassan Hajjaj, Mari Katayama, Mona Kuhn and Erwin Wurm.
Gervanne + Matthias Leridon – Committed collectors
After a degree in Business Law, a master’s degree in History and the École du Louvre, Gervanne Colboc-Leridon became a professional auctioneer and for ten years she organized auctions for various auction houses (Sothebys, Drouot, etc.). In 2004, she published the Guide des ventes aux enchères (Larousse Éditions) and for several years she wrote a monthly column dedicated to the art market for the magazine Atmosphères and on the Pink TV channel. She is Managing Director of the Trucy investment holding company and, since 20008, Co-President of the NGO AADfund.org, associate member of the UN ECOSOC.
A graduate of ESSEC and IEP in Paris, Matthias Leridon holds a postgraduate degree in audiovisual communication law. A former auditor at the Institut des hautes études de défense nationale, he founded the communications consultancy Tilder, which he has managed for over 35 years. Since 2008, he is Co-Chairman of AAD-fund.org. At the same time, he is Vice-Chairman of AMREF Health Africa France, the first African public health NGO, and a director of the SOS Group and the NGO ACTED. Since 2018, he has chaired the “Centre Pompidou Accelerations”. He is the author of L’Afrique va bien published by Éditions Dans Publics in 2010. He is a full member of the 3rd section of the Academy of Overseas Sciences.
Through the Gervanne + Matthias Leridon collection, one of the world’s largest private collections of contemporary African art, they support African creation through grants, commissions, loans and public promotion initiatives.
Bénédicte Alliot – General Director of the Cité internationale des arts
Bénédicte Alliot, PhD was an assistant professor in postcolonial and translation studies at Université Paris-Diderot (Paris) until 2002. She then moved to Johannesburg as Director of the Institut français (2002-2006), followed by New Delhi, where she was the Cultural Attaché to the French Embassy (2006-2010). From 2010 to early 2016, she headed the Cultural Seasons programme at the Institut français in Paris. Since 2016, she has been Director General of the Cité internationale des arts, an art residency centre located in central Paris (in the Marais and in Montmartre) that hosts more than 300 artists and culture professionals of all disciplines and nationalities.
