A day of discussions to coincide with the exhibition Des mots et des mondes

Following on from Des mots et des mondes, this day of talks and discussions aims to trace the career paths of former students of the Beaux-Arts de Paris, based on research featured in the exhibition.

With Madeleine de Colnet, Armel Cotinat-Flynn, Maëva Delettre, Laura Karp Lugo, Giulia Longo, Lola Mirti, Pascal Odille, Chương-Đài Võ, Mia Yu, Joël Zouna, Mélanie Bouteloup, Armelle Pradalier et Alice Thomine-Berrada.

Drawing on established archives (notably the Reg-Arts database and the collections of the Maison des Beaux-Arts – now the Galerie du Crous) and personal sources (family archives, correspondence, and personal accounts), this research sheds light on complex artistic circulations and reimagines the historiographies established by art history. By bringing together the perspectives of historians, artists and students, the event explores a broader history of the Beaux-Arts de Paris, attentive to transnational dynamics and conceived as a space for the production of critical, plural and situated knowledge.

The round-table discussions form part of the Beaux-Arts de Paris’s cross-cutting research theme, ‘Extractivist Legacies’, seeking to interrogate what lies buried in the School’s incomplete archives. Exploring the archives today involves examining the logics of extraction—of resources, forms, or subjectivities—that have run through the history of art and cultural institutions, and questioning the material, political and symbolic conditions under which knowledge, collections and narratives are constituted.

This event views the archives not merely as a repository of the past, but as a living field of research and reinterpretation, where the aim is less to fill in the gaps than to forge connections, by linking investigations, trajectories, formations and networks.

In line with the themes explored during the day’s events and in the exhibition, Beaux-Arts de Paris will host Philippe Artières on Tuesday 19 May at 7pm (free admission) as part of its cultural programme (Penser le Présent). More infos on the event.

Programme

9.30 am | Public reception
9.45 am | Welcome message

10–11.30 am | Panel discussion 1: Investigations and critical storytelling
Moderator: Mélanie Bouteloup

10–10.15 am | Introduction by Mélanie Bouteloup
10.15–10.30 am | ‘Empowerment through the visual arts. In the beginning was Georgette Diallo…’ by Joël Zouna
10.30–10.45 am | Whispering Opera: Pan Yuliang, 1956, performance-lecture by Mia Yu (English, French and Chinese)
10.45–11 am | Fabulations and gaps: the fragmented biography of Gertrudis Chale, by Laura Karp Lugo
11–11.15 | Discussion with the audience
11.15–11.25 | These stories cannot be written down, a workshop on passing on oral histories by Armel Cotinat-Flynn, a student on the Artists and Exhibition Professions (FAME) course.

11.30–12.30 am | Palais des Beaux-Arts
A tour of the exhibition Des Mots et des Mondes with the curators and a number of speakers.

12.30–1 pm | Left gallery
A look at the third-year final project by Maëva Delettre, a student of the Artists and Exhibition Professions course.

2–3.30 pm | Panel discussion 2: Beaux-Arts de Paris: archives of a transition
Moderator: Alice Thomine Berrada

4–5.30 pm | Panel discussion 3: Networks and commitments
Moderator: Armelle Pradalier

4.–4.10 pm | Introduction by Armelle Pradalier
4.15–4.30 pm | What does studio photography tell us? (examples from the collections of the Beaux-Arts de Paris) by Giulia Longo
4.30–4.45 pm | Painting on the margins: the career of Alexander ‘Skunder’ Boghossian (1937–2003) by Lola Mirti
4.45–5 pm | The Casablanca School: examples and analyses by Madeleine de Colnet

5–5.30 pm | Discussion and closing remarks

Speakers

Roundtable: Investigations and Fiction

Armel Cotinat-Flynn, a Master’s student at EHESS and a student at FAME. Born in France to Irish parents, his research into contemporary participatory art is combined here with his interest in Gaelic storytelling traditions.
Laura Karp Lugo holds a PhD from the University of Paris 1 and has been a lecturer in art history at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris since 2023. Her research contributes to a global and interconnected history of art from a Latin American perspective, exploring the intersection of artistic creation and exile.
Mia Yu is an artist, art historian and independent curator based in Paris and Beijing. Her work is rooted in long-term field research conducted within large-scale infrastructure projects and extractive sites, and explores the complex links between post-extractivist nature, cosmology and geopolitics in the Asian region. Her work has been exhibited and screened at venues including the Singapore Art Museum, Villa Vassilieff, Photografiska, the Goethe-Institut, the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, the Times Museum, the Kunstverein Hamburg, Harvard University and as part of the Serendipity Arts Festival. Her video Pan Yuliang: A Journey from Silence (2017) revisits the artist’s trajectory and explores transnational historical narratives.
Joël Zouna, researcher, urban planner and PhD student at the INHA (project: The Arts of Africa during the Second World War). A graduate of ENS-PSL, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and the African School of Architecture and Urban Planning (Lomé, Togo), he is writing a thesis on the circulation of Cameroonian colonial collections at the Field Museum in Chicago, under the supervision of Charlotte Guichard and Bénédicte Savoy. He is also interested in contemporary exhibition practices.

Table ronde Les Beaux-Arts de Paris, les archives d'un passage

Maëva Delettre, a third-year student in the Guillaume Paris studio, is also enrolled in the FAME (Artists and Exhibition Professions) programme at the Beaux-Arts de Paris.
Pascal Odille is a French expert in modern and contemporary art. He is a member of the National Chamber of Specialised Experts (C.N.E.S), has worked for several auction houses, and is the artistic director of the Beirut Art Fair. He is currently the director of the Enseigne des Oudin.
Chương-Đài Võ, a researcher, curator and writer of Vietnamese origin, is active in the fields of contemporary art and Southeast Asian studies. She explores artistic dynamics and cultural institutions and has published research on the art schools of Hanoi and Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), analysing their role in training artists and the circulation of artistic ideas from the colonial era to the present day.

Roundtable: Networks and Commitments

Madeleine de Colnet has co-directed Zamân Books & Curating with Morad Montazami since 2017. Between 2007 and 2016, she supported various institutions during their establishment in Morocco and France: LE BAL (Paris) and Kulte Gallery & Edition (Rabat). More recently, she co-curated: ‘Casablanca Art School’ – Tate St Ives / Sharjah Art Foundation / Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 2023–2024; ‘Arab Presences: Modern Art and Decolonisation. Paris 1908–1988’ – Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris, 2024.
Giulia Longo is Curator of Prints and Photographs at Beaux-Arts de Paris. A specialist in the links between the visual arts and medical sciences in modern Europe, she has developed an interdisciplinary approach to art history. She has curated several exhibitions, including *Une donation exceptionnelle. Paintings, Drawings and Engravings from the Poitrey-Ballabio Collection (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg, 2019), Anne de France. A Woman of Power, Princess of the Arts (Musée Anne-de-Beaujeu, Moulins, 2022) and The Tiepolo: Invention and Virtuosity in Venice (Beaux-Arts de Paris, 2024). The most recent exhibition she co-curated is Rosso and Primaticcio: the Renaissance at Fontainebleau, on display at the Beaux-Arts de Paris until 1 February 2026.
Lola Mirti is a PhD student at EHESS and INHA. Her research focuses on the history of art education and pictorial practices in Ethiopia during the 20th century, particularly during the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie I (r. 1930–1974). Her thesis examines the careers of Ethiopian artists in Europe as well as the establishment of the Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts. Lola Mirti is affiliated with the Institute of African Worlds (IMAF) and associated with the French Centre for Ethiopian Studies.

Graphic design: © Halldora Magnusdottir