Public Lecture
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
5:30-7:00 PM
The Orozco Room – The New School
66 West 12th Street, 7th floor
Concluding the 25th anniversary of the landmark Paris exhibition, Magiciens de la Terre, considered the first contemporary global art exhibition held at the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Grande Halle de la Villete, the exhibition curator Jean-Hubert Martin will discuss this event’s historical and enduring legacies. Inaugurated concurrent with Tiananmen Square, and months before the historic fall of the Berlin Wall, Magiciens de la Terre succeeded in provoking trans-national debates about definitions of representation, identity, cultural hierarchy, geographic dominance, and western conceptions of traditional cultures. Martin continues to argue for a global view of art that challenges museum programming methods and subjects, charting an expanded contemporary art terrain that positions Western and non-Western art in non-hierarchical dialogues.
Jean-Hubert Martin has curated numerous exhibitions including: Contemporary Morocco at the Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris (2014-15); Theater of the World at La Maison Rouge, Paris (2013); Against Exclusion at the Moscow Biennial (2009); and Partage d’Exotismes at the Biennale de Lyon (2000). He served as director of the Museum Kunst Palast in Düsseldorf from 2000-2006; directed the renovation of the Musée National des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie from 1994-1999; and served as director of the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris from 1987-1990. Martin was part of the curatorial team that established the Centre Georges Pompidou and he was a contributor to the exhibitions Paris-Berlin (1978) and Paris-Moscow (1979). Martin has recently published an anthology of his writings, L’Art au Large with Flammarion, Paris, 2012.
This event has been made possible with the sponsorship of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York and the School of Art and Design History, Parsons.
