The former French culture minister Jack Lang resigned as the president of the L’Institut du Monde Arab (Institute of the Arab World, or IMA) on Saturday (7 February) over his ties with Jeffrey Epstein. Lang, 86, who has led the Parisian institution since 2013, vigorously denies any wrongdoing, following the latest revelations from the Epstein files, where his name appears 673 times.
France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, “took note” of the resignation and announced that the IMA board, composed of representatives of France and Arab states, will choose a successor within seven days.
In a letter to the minister, published by news agency AFP, Jack Lang criticised “the current climate of personal attacks, unfounded suspicions and amalgams”. “It revolts and disgusts me,” he said, adding that he is resigning in order “to preserve the magnificent institution that is the IMA” and “to be able to refute all the accusations” against him.
Initially, Jack Lang stated he felt “he had no reason to resign”. He acknowledged his long “cordial relationship” with Jeffrey Epstein, whom he says he met around 15 years ago through the film director Woody Allen. Lang claims, however, that he knew nothing of his sex crimes.
Epstein was convicted of soliciting prostitution and soliciting a minor in 2008. He died in prison in 2019 in what was officially ruled a suicide, while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.
“I am not accustomed to asking for the criminal records of my friends,” Lang said. He said that the Epstein he knew was a “generous sponsor” and “a very nice man”.
The two men had intermittent exchanges from 2012 to 2019, just before Epstein was arrested. The email exchanges indicate Lang had travelled in Epstein’s jet and car, and had occasionally sought sponsorships for projects, including for a film on his own life. Lang also appears to have proposed the sale of a riad in Morocco to the financier.
Lang denies any involvement in Prytanee, an offshore art dealing company in the Virgin Islands which, according to the website Mediapart, was set up by Epstein with Lang’s daughter Caroline, with a $1.4m deposit.
Jack Lang’s lawyer, Laurent Merlet, told radio RTL that his client “might have given his opinion on works of art” but never received a cent from the company. Caroline Lang, who resigned as the director of the independent film and TV producers’ union, said she too “never benefited from the company” and was “unaware that her name figured on Epstein’s will” leaving her a sum of $5m that she “never received”.
On Friday the Paris prosecutor’s office announced the opening of a preliminary investigation against Jack and Caroline Lang for “laundering of aggravated tax fraud”. Then Jack Lang was summoned to the foreign affairs ministry “at the request of [the French] President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu”, shortly after which he resigned.
The Institut du Monde Arabe, inaugurated by Jack Lang in 1987, while he was culture minister, was founded with 18 members of the Arab league. The building, designed by architect Jean Nouvel on the bank of the Seine, houses 27,000 sq m of art galleries, a school, a cinema, a bookshop and a restaurant,and welcomes some 750,000 visitors annually.
Jack Lang is the highest-profile French figure to be named in relation to the Epstein scandal. He was the culture minister under President François Mitterrand in the 1980s and 90s, during which time he was the leading figure of a flourishing new era for the arts—launching theatre, musical and heritage festivals across the country, including the Marche des Fiertés (Gay Pride Parade).
He presided over the modernisation and expansion of the Louvre as well as the construction of Paris’s Musée D’Orsay, opera house, national library, Art History Institute, and a science and technology complex. He has a reputation as a promoter of contemporary art, having defended Pei’s glass pyramid in the Louvre and the striped Buren columns in the Palais Royal, which were fiercely attacked by the French right. As head of IMA, he oversaw projects including "A Museum for Palestine“, a collection of works held for a future Palestinian national museum of modern and contemporary arts.
However, this former teacher, owner of a 150-square meter apartment in the exclusive Place des Vosges in Paris, was also seen as the symbolic figure of what the French call “la gauche caviar” (champagne sipping lefties), which is now under fierce assault from France’s far right, particularly on social media.
Jack Lang, Caroline Lang, and L’Institut du Monde Arab were approached for comment by The Art Newspaper.