Françoise Cachin
Françoise Cachin (8 May 1936, Paris – 4 February 2011, Paris) was a French art historian and curator. She was the founding director of the Musée d’Orsay and the author of numerous books on 19th-century French painting. Life Françoise Cachin was born to the pediatrician Charles Cachin and his wife Ginette (née Signac). Her grandparents included the communist politician Marcel Cachin and the pointillist painters Paul Signac and Jeanne Selmersheim-Desgrange. Cachin studied art history under André Chastel at the Institut d'Art et d'Archéologie of the University of Paris. After training at the Louvre and the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, she worked as a curator at the Musée National d'Art Moderne from 1969 to 1978, eventually becoming chief curator. In this capacity she organized numerous exhibitions, including an important Paul Klee retrospective, and oversaw the museum's move from the Palais de Tokyo to the new Centre Georges Pompidou. In 1978 Cachin joined the planning team for the new Musée d'Orsay. During this time she continued to organize exhibitions, including a major Manet retrospective in 1983. When the Musée d'Orsay opened in 1986 she was named director, and in this role organized retrospectives of Paul Gauguin (1989) and Georges Seurat