Jean-Paul Desroches is an expert on the Far East and was the assistant curator of the exhibition “La Cité interdite au Louvre” (2011). He has held a chair in the Far Eastern arts for twenty years and is now an honorary professor at the École du Louvre and general curator at the Musée Guimet, where he has been in charge of the Chinese section since 1977. Also an archaeologist, he participated in deep-sea excavations in the China Sea between 1988 and 1993. In 1999, he established the National Museum of Filipino People in Manila. Since 2000, he has been the director of the French archaeological mission in Mongolia, which earned him the title of doctor honoris causa, awarded by the Mongolian Academy of Sciences in 2005. In 2006, he became the vice-president of Mongol Cultural Heritage.

An international figure in the world of Far Eastern arts, he has curated exhibitions in New York, São Paulo, Tokyo, Beijing, Hong Kong, Berlin and Madrid. Between 1979 and 1980, he was even a guest curator at the National Museum of Kyoto.

Jean-Paul Desroches has written and directed the publication of many books on Far Eastern art, including Kyôto-Tôkyô – Des samouraïs aux mangas (2010), which focuses on the complex relationship between modernity and tradition in Japan.