10 YEARS AS A GALLERY ATTENDANT AT THE MUSÉE PICASSO PARIS
AN EXHIBITION BY Juan Diego Vergara
From Thursday 3 to Sunday 13 September 2026
Open Thursday to Sunday, 2 pm to 7 pm
Opening reception : Thursday 3 September 2026 from 6:30 pm
AAB Gallery, 1 rue Francis Picabia, Paris 20th arrondissement (plan)
Juan Diego Vergara, Juan Diego Vergara est agent de surveillance au Musée Picasso (autoportrait), huile sur Toile, 50 x 50 cm.
“This exhibition celebrates my first ten years in public service as a gallery attendant and visitor services officer at the Musée Picasso Paris, where I have held this position since 2016 and where I still work today in this singular setting.
These years have been an especially rich professional experience for me, but also a deeply human one. They have allowed me to engage on a daily basis with a highly diverse public, as well as with colleagues from many different backgrounds — a diversity that, in my eyes, is a genuine source of richness.
The Hôtel Salé, which houses the museum, is a place steeped in history and culture. Working among Pablo Picasso’s works creates a unique, almost intimate environment in which art becomes a daily presence. Added to this is the cultural diversity of my colleagues, who come from Africa, the Maghreb, and France, while I myself come from Peru, in Latin America. This convergence of origins and life paths has enabled me to better grasp the cosmopolitan character of the city in which I live. All these identities come together around a shared language, French, which becomes a space for encounter, exchange, and connection.
This project focuses on the figure of the gallery attendant, a character I have already explored in earlier works, notably in Juan Diego Vergara, the Peruvian visual artist is a gallery attendant (2018, oil on canvas, 50 × 50 cm). This motif belongs to a broader body of work that I have been developing for several years, centred on the artist’s everyday life and on the way it can itself become the subject of the work. To depict oneself through one’s work is to affirm that creation is not confined to the studio: it is nourished by what one sees, what one lives, and what one embodies. For a painter, bringing one’s own professional role into the work means blurring the boundaries between the artist and the individual, between the observer and the attendant, between the one who protects the works and the one who creates them.
For this exhibition, I created a large-scale painting measuring five metres in length, entitled Self-Portrait as a Gallery Attendant and Visitors at the Musée Picasso Paris. I am also presenting a series of drawings, Visitors at the Museum, produced throughout 2025 and continued into 2026. This body of work includes more than 300 pencil drawings on paper, along with other works exhibited as part of this presentation.”
Juan Diego Vergara, Paris, février 2026
