Xavier Dectot
Xavier Dectot, born on in Pithiviers, is a French museum curator and art historian.
A former curator at the Musée de Cluny, specialising in sculptures and ivories from the Middle Ages, he has been director of the Louvre-Lens from 2011 to 2016 and Keeper of Art and Design at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh from 2016 to 2019. Since 2019, he is the director of the Lusail Museum in Doha, Qatar.
Biography
Education
He studied in the École des chartes, from which he graduated in 1998 with a thesis titled La Mort en Champagne : étude de l’art funéraire aux XIIe-XIIIe siècles), in the Institut national du patrimoine, where he entered in 1997, but only graduated in 2001 as he interrupted his studies to complete his PhD, at the Casa de Velázquez and at the École pratique des hautes études.Career
Professor at the École du Louvre, he started his curatorial career in the Musée de Cluny in 2001, in charge of ivories and sculptures, and extensively published the latter collection in paper and online catalogues.On 27 March 2011, he was appointed as the founding director of the Louvre-Lens Museum.
In 2016, he left that position to become Keeper of Art and Design at National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
In 2019, he joined Qatar Museums as director of the Orientalist Museum, since then renamed Lusail Museum.