Creation of the Department
Despite some attempts quickly interrupted during the previous regimes, the Ministry of Cultural Affairs was really born in France with the Ve General de Gaulle advises his Prime Minister Michel Debré to propose a ministry to André Malraux:
“It will help you to keep Malraux. Create a department for him, for example, a group of services that you can call “Cultural Affairs”. Malraux will give relief to your government. »
Malraux agrees. By this creation, signed on February 3, 1959, of a full ministry, the General sends a strong sign to the French that for him the global influence of France must also pass through the influence of his culture.
The founding decree of 24 July 1959, written by Malraux himself, gives this ministry the “mission to make accessible the capital works of humanity, and first of all of France, to the greatest possible number of French people, to ensure the widest audience for our cultural heritage and to promote the creation of works art and the spirit that enrich it ".
The new ministry brings together services previously attached to various ministerial departments: the National Education (the General Directorate of Arts and Letters, the Directorate of Architecture, the Directorate of Archives de France), Industry and Commerce (the National Film Centre), and the High Commission for Youth and Sports. Composed at the beginning of its existence of four central administration services, this number of services will continue to grow between 1959 and 2002 as the ministry’s missions increase. The direction of the book was created in 1975 (under the mandate of Michel Guy). In 1978, Jean-Philippe Lecat was awarded the communication portfolio. On the other hand, even if Malraux wanted it, France’s external cultural action has always remained under the aegis of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
At the same time regional directorates of cultural affairs, decentralized services representing all sectors of the Ministry and placed under the authority of the prefects of regions, will gradually establish themselves throughout the territory, including in the DOM TOM.
To support its development, the cultural administration will create public institutions to entrust them with different public service missions: museums and heritage institutions, schools of higher education culture, centres for the creation and dissemination of performing arts, etc.
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