Bernard Chenebault has been fired from his position as president of the Friends of Palais de Tokyo, the Paris institution’s patrons’ group, after he posted hateful comments on climate activist Greta Thunberg on social media. On a Facebook post shared over the weekend, Chenebault called the sixteen-year-old girl a ‘madwoman’, adding he hoped a lunatic would shoot her down. The art centre’s recently appointed director Emma Lavigne reacted quickly by asking him to resign, while the institutional twitter account sought to publicly distance itself from the patron, stating: ’We disapprove of these words and dissociate ourselves from this position, formulated in a personal capacity and which does not engage the Palais de Tokyo or the Friends of the Palais de Tokyo’.
Chenebault is reported to have since then posted an apology on Facebook. Since the incident, however, various reporters have uncovered a number older tweets and Facebook posts (which have now been deleted) in which the former president made racist and reactionary comments. The patrons group are due to elect a new president in the coming weeks.
1 October 2019
