{"id":397,"date":"2017-03-24T18:38:53","date_gmt":"2017-03-24T22:38:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/pariscasestudy\/?p=397"},"modified":"2017-04-02T15:09:45","modified_gmt":"2017-04-02T19:09:45","slug":"madame-president-catherine-pegard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/pariscasestudy\/2017\/03\/24\/madame-president-catherine-pegard\/","title":{"rendered":"Madame-President: Catherine P\u00e9gard"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Mariachiara Ficarelli<\/em><\/p>\n

In the balustrade terraces of the Jardin du Luxembourg are a series of celebrated French female saints and queens. One day, Catherine P\u00e9gard may have a statue of her own.<\/p>\n

P\u00e9gard is the president of the Ch\u00e2teau de Versailles. She has held this position since 2011 when Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French president, appointed her.<\/p>\n

Yet, P\u00e9gard while having an executive role is not removed from the people and space she governs. It is perhaps her background working as a political journalist for Le Point, which allows P\u00e9gard to have such a profound on-the-ground knowledge of Versailles. She stresses the importance of being there.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to know something, you must know to be there,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

And P\u00e9gard is there. She knows that the best moment to appreciate the Hall of Mirrors is at sunset when the light is pink. She knows that putting Angela Merkel\u2019s office in the bathroom of Marie de Antoinette is the best way to impress the Chancellor of Germany. However, she also knows that she still has \u201ceverything to learn about Versailles.\u201d<\/p>\n

True to her origins as a journalist, P\u00e9gard understands that there is always something new to uncover that has been left out of \u201chistory with a Big H.\u201d<\/p>\n

She tells the anecdote of the discovery of the wedding between the driver and the secretary of President Eisenhower that took place in the chapel in the Palace as an example of \u201clittle h\u201d history. It is such stories, left out of the commonly known history, which P\u00e9gard believes keep Versailles from becoming a \u201cdead museum.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, P\u00e9gard does not aim to paint a rosy picture of her job with her heartwarming anecdotes. She states, \u201cthe good is better than you think and the bad is worse thank you think.\u201d<\/p>\n

P\u00e9gard does not feel the need to delve further into either the positive or the negative aspects of her job. Likewise, she does not feel the need to linger much on her position as a woman in the male-dominated French political environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most important things have been done,\u201d P\u00e9gard says in reference to the representation of women in the French workplace.<\/p>\n

She gestures to her pregnant assistant sitting at the end of the table to highlight her statement. Then she changes subject.<\/p>\n

P\u00e9gard does not care for frills and much elaboration in any of her statements. She is straightforward. She knows that there is work to do. Above all, she knows that she will do it well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Mariachiara Ficarelli In the balustrade terraces of the Jardin du Luxembourg are a series of celebrated French female saints and queens. One day, Catherine P\u00e9gard may have a statue of her own. P\u00e9gard is the president of the Ch\u00e2teau de Versailles. She has held this position since 2011 when Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Madame-President: Catherine P\u00e9gard”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":170,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/pariscasestudy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/pariscasestudy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/pariscasestudy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/pariscasestudy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/170"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/pariscasestudy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/pariscasestudy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":685,"href":"http:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/pariscasestudy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions\/685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/pariscasestudy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/pariscasestudy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/pariscasestudy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}