After serving just a little under two years as the Centre Pompidou Foundation’s curator of American art and curator-at-large for the Paris museum itself, Florence Derieux is making the leap to the commercial sphere, joining powerhouse gallery Hauser & Wirth in New York as its new director of exhibitions.

Though the gallery has not yet publicly announced the appointment, artnet News was able to independently confirm the news from Derieux herself. Her name is also now listed on the contact page of Hauser & Wirth’s website.

In hiring the French-born Derieux, Hauser & Wirth is gaining a widely admired curator with extensive experience in the museum world, as well as with the patrons who fund the institutions and donate works.

As an art historian and curator, she cut her teeth at institutions like the Picasso Museum in Antibes and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Beginning in 2008, Derieux was director of FRAC Champagne-Ardenne in Reims, where she organized exhibitions of work by artists including Tom Burr, Agnes Denes, Cyprien Gaillard, Nick Mauss, Lisa Oppenheim, and Sterling Ruby, among others. 

Between 2013 and 2015, Derieux also dipped her toe into the commercial art world as the curator of Art Basel Parcours, the section of the fair that invites artists to intervene in historic sites around Basel’s city center. She also curated this year’s “IN/SITU” program at EXPO Chicago, which counts Sanford Biggers, Nate Lowman, and Bethany Collins in its presentation.

Derieux’s hire signals the continuation of a trend, with more and more high-profile experts from the non-commercial side making the transition to contemporary-art galleries. This past April, Hauser & Wirth also appointed now-former New York Times art writer Randy Kennedy to its staff as director of special projects—making Derieux the second major team member this year to join the gallery despite the lack of a real commercial background.