Pierre GaudibertTowards the Museum of the Future
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This exhibition pays tribute to Pierre Gaudibert (1928-2006), art historian, critic and curator, whose library and archives entered the Musée d'Art Moderne in 2015 together with part of his personal collection.
In 1967, with the backing of the City of Paris Fine Arts Department, Gaudibert founded the experimental Animation Recherche Confrontation (ARC) section at the Musée d'Art Moderne (which had been open since 1961), As director of ARC from 1967 to 1972, he promoted a new museographic model for France, rooted in the current situation and the variety of artistic research, and based on the direct relationship between artists, works and visitors. The museum's dynamism, modus operandi and collection of contemporary art, are the legacy of this vision.
The first of the exhibition's three sections mirrors the political commitment Gaudibert shared in the mid-1960s with many artists of his generation, members of the Salon de la Jeune Peinture. In the second section these artists, both figurative and abstract, can be seen blazing a radical trail towards new avenues of expression, which the museum's programming began echoing in the late 1960s. These movements gave rise, among others, to Narrative Figuration and Supports/Surfaces. The third and final section, a partial presentation of Gaudibert's library and archives, spotlights his intellectual contribution to the aesthetic and sociological concerns of the time, notably with regard to the evolution of the role of museums.
Curator: Hélène Leroy