Biography
Jacques-Sylvain Klein is an art historian, exhibition curator, author and lecturer.
Born in Rouen in 1946, a graduate of Sciences Po Paris and holder of a doctorate in management sciences, he first pursued a career as a senior civil servant at the French National Assembly, where he took part in the preparatory work for the organic law on public finance (LOLF). Deputy mayor of Rouen in charge of finance from 1995 to 2000, he then chaired the city's municipal credit bank.
A specialist of Norman Impressionism, he has devoted several reference books to painting in Normandy, beginning with La Normandie, berceau de l'impressionnisme (first published in 1996, reissued in 2024). At the initiative of Laurent Fabius, he became in 2010 the first general curator of the Normandie Impressionniste festival.
As an exhibition curator, he notably signed The Open-Air Studio. The Impressionists in Normandy at the Musée Jacquemart-André (2016) andPaul Durand-Ruel and Post-Impressionism at the Caillebotte estate in Yerres (2021).
A specialist of medieval Norman Judaism, he has been, since 2007, the delegate of the association of the Maison Sublime in Rouen — a medieval Jewish monument reopened to the public in 2022, and the oldest preserved Hebrew building in France — to which he has devoted two books. An associate member of the Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters of Caen, he continues to work as a lecturer and cultural mediator.
