Frédéric Jousset, a graduate of HEC, made his fortune in 2000 by co-founding the company Webhelp, specializing in telephone call centers.
The group now has 64,000 employees in 49 countries and achieved a turnover of 1.5 billion euros in 2019. He is also one of the most important cultural patrons in France, notably for the Louvre, of which he is Member of the Board of Directors. During our interview he shared with us to be "obsessed" by cultural democratization, he also revealed his biggest dream: “That ArtExplora becomes for Culture what GreenPeace is for Environment”:
Passionate about art and patrimony, Frédéric Jousset is deeply implicated in the cultural world. President of Beaux Arts & Cie (Beaux Arts Magazine), owner of Relais de Chambord, he chaired the board of directors of the Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris from 2011 to 2014. Administrator of the National School of Decorative Arts, but also of the Louvre since 2016, he is particularly involved with the museum to initiate conferences in prisons. He was also tasked in 2018 by the President of the Republic with leading the working group for the launch of the Culture Pass. He is a shareholder in various companies in the art sector including Arteum (museum shops), Incubart (art platform) and Artsper (market place in art).
Frédéric Jousset is Knight of the National Order of Merit, Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters and Knight of the Legion of Honor.
What touched us the most during the interview he graciously gave to Rosemont Art Advisory is his wish: “To leave a better world for his daughter”, to “follow his inner calling, his passion for culture in the most democratic form”.
You have just launched the European foundation ArtExplora. Please explain its vocation to us.The group now has 64,000 employees in 49 countries and achieved a turnover of 1.5 billion euros in 2019. He is also one of the most important cultural patrons in France, notably for the Louvre, of which he is Member of the Board of Directors. During our interview he shared with us to be "obsessed" by cultural democratization, he also revealed his biggest dream: “That ArtExplora becomes for Culture what GreenPeace is for Environment”:
Passionate about art and patrimony, Frédéric Jousset is deeply implicated in the cultural world. President of Beaux Arts & Cie (Beaux Arts Magazine), owner of Relais de Chambord, he chaired the board of directors of the Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris from 2011 to 2014. Administrator of the National School of Decorative Arts, but also of the Louvre since 2016, he is particularly involved with the museum to initiate conferences in prisons. He was also tasked in 2018 by the President of the Republic with leading the working group for the launch of the Culture Pass. He is a shareholder in various companies in the art sector including Arteum (museum shops), Incubart (art platform) and Artsper (market place in art).
Frédéric Jousset is Knight of the National Order of Merit, Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters and Knight of the Legion of Honor.
What touched us the most during the interview he graciously gave to Rosemont Art Advisory is his wish: “To leave a better world for his daughter”, to “follow his inner calling, his passion for culture in the most democratic form”.
ArtExplora is the continuity of a philanthropic commitment that began with Le Louvre in 2007, and it is also certainly the desire to reinvent myself, by creating my own foundation.
I especially did not want it to bear my name because it is not a personal project. In fact, I dream of creating with ArtExplora an equivalent of what Greenpeace is for ecology or Amnesty International for Human Rights. This foundation will be recognized as being of public utility, I will be in the minority in the governance and it is a project which aims to involve many people, as much as possible.
In culture, we don't have a problem of multiple offers, but rather of requests, of attendance. The numbers that 1 in 2 French people per year who visit a museum or a monument struck me. Because that also means that 1 in 2 never go. It is therefore clearly on this ambition to expand audiences for culture that the ArtExplora foundation was born. It's about finding and building bridges to bring culture to people, where they are.
In addition, you have just created your own investment fund, ArtNova. What are its projects, its priorities?
Frédéric Jousset: ArtNova is a different approach. Always with the idea of devoting myself to the cultural sector, but here, defined in the broader sense, with all the cultural and creative industries, because in this I include cinema or gastronomy. After that of the BPI, we will be the second fund in the sector, for everything relating to the “French touch”, the creative touch of France, which is a very beautiful breeding ground with a very good image in the world. ArtNova is a fund of 100 million euros that comes from my heritage. The advantage is a permanent fund called "evergreen", patient capital that can be long-lasting for projects that take time, sometimes 10 years. And the second benefit is that I don't have any constraints on the type of investments I can make; everything is possible, including recovery and reconstruction, by being majority or minority (…).
Your contagious quest in the need to transmit, to share, to democratize access to culture, especially among young people is exemplary and unique. How are you going to do this?
I think that battle begins in childhood. Everyone is born an artist. Every child sings, dances, paints or draws, but at 5 or 6 years old, when they start going to school, they are asked to put down the brush to pick up a pen. This is where segregation occurs between those who are in families where there is an interest in culture and those where there is not. This false start is very difficult to make up for because of the cultural divide. The first subject, therefore, is to develop programs for children in schools. The second subject is what I signed up for with the government with the Culture Pass.
The realization took longer than expected, in particular because of the change of minister, but the results are starting to be promising. This is the first time that the Ministry of Culture will subsidize demand, not supply. A real paradigm shift. And then afterwards, we must find ways to bring culture into the language and codes of young people without lowering it. We can place great hopes on the immersive, for example the Atelier des Lumières which is a digital art center. I strongly believe in these discovery offers and in the immense possibilities of digital technology which can make you want to go then to face-to-face.
Please tell us more about the Mumo mobile museum and ArtExplorer catamaran
With the Center Pompidou, Pompidou Malaga and the Kanal Foundation (Brussels), Art Explora is investing € 600,000 in the MuMo mobile museum, an itinerant truck in charge of 25 major works (Delaunay, Chagall), on loan from Beaubourg, which will stop over in small towns and suburbs, in conjunction with local associations.
Art Explora will also allow cultural institutions to set up free bus services to facilitate access to the museum from remote areas or to take a major work from a museum to unusual places.
The foundation has launched the construction of a giant ArtExplorer catamaran, which will be launched in 2023, the first museum vessel to sail around the world: “60% of the world's population live within an hour of the sea. “Europe is a continent of coastal cities, most African capitals are ports. For centuries, ships have moved goods. Ours will circulate art ".
Finally, Art Explora supports creation: it will finance a residency program in Montmartre to which 20 artists from around the world will be invited annually to discuss issues of societal and environmental commitments. Delivery of the artist workshops is happening as we publish the interview.
We want to thank Mr. Jousset and his team for making the interview with us and wish them lots of success and may their “infectious” positive energy for democratizing culture reach faraway horizons.
We look forward to welcoming ArtExplora in Monaco soon.
For more information on how you can become a part of the journey please go to: https://artexplora.org/
This interview is part of Rosemont Art Advisory's monthly newsletter. To receive our newsletter, or for more information, please contact Karolina Blasiak, Art Advisor at k.blasiak@rosemont-mc.com
Credit Pictures Frederic Jousset by Francois Roelants