About the event:

On a tour led by French Cultural Attaché François Bridey, Insiders will enter the Stanford White-designed Payne-Whitney mansion to discover a treasure trove of gilded age architecture and contemporary French craftsmanship and design. The star of the show will be the newly-inaugurated Villa Albertine Atelier, a room with sweeping views of Central Park and outfitted with superb décor by Hugo Toro. Other highlights include a statue by Michelangelo, a Matisse tapestry, the iconic Albertine Books, and the Rococo Venetian room. Insiders will also explore areas of the building that are off limits to the public, including the offices of the Cultural Counselor of France in the US.

About François Bridey

François Bridey, the Director of Museums and Cultural Heritage, Villa Albertine is an art historian, archaeologist, and museum curator. After graduating from the Ecole du Louvre, the ESCP Business School and the Ca’Foscari University of Venice, he entered the Institut national du patrimoine in Paris, from which he graduated in 2012. He began his career in museums as Deputy Director of the Museum of Fine Art and Archaeology of Evreux in Normandy, and in 2015, joined the department of Near Eastern Antiquities at the Louvre as curator in charge of the collections of Ancient Iran where he devoted himself to the study of the rich archeological collections and their promotion to a wide audience. During this time, he also taught Ancient Near East Archaeology at the Ecole du Louvre and the Institut catholique de Paris and participated in several archaeological missions in Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkmenistan.

In November 2020, François Bridey joined the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York as head of the newly created Museums and Cultural Heritage Department. He oversees the promotion of French museums and cultural institutions, accompanies them in their American projects and developments, and fosters collaboration between French and American professionals.