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. 

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. 

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 Chales, 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

2–2:15 pm | Introduction by Alice Thomine Berrada 
2.15–2.30 pm | Lê Văn Đệ by Chương-Đài Võ
2.30–2.45 pm | On the work of Monique Poncelet by Maeva Delettre 
2.45–3 pm | Amal Abdenour by Pascal Odille
3–3.30 pm | Discussion

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

Graphic design: © Halldora Magnusdottir