This event will be held in English.
Co-sponsored by Columbia Global Centers | Paris and the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain.
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The Reid Hall Caféothèque will be open before the event with wine and snacks for sale.
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The event
Join Senior Curator Leanne Sacramone for a presentation on the photography of William Eggleston and Robert Adams, who will give a presentation followed by a 15-minute discussion with the audience. Sacramone will create a dialogue between these prominent contemporary photographers in the collection of the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain. Although seemingly disparate, the juxtaposition of their oeuvres reveals fascinating contrasts and connections of noise and silence, urban space and wild places.
William Eggleston (b. 1939) was a pioneer of color photography, one of the first to elevate it to the status of fine art. Although he is most well-known for his pictures of the American South, he has also photographed cities around the world. Using what he calls a “democratic” approach to photography, he focuses on the most ordinary subjects in the urban landscape. Amidst the cacophony of signs, buildings, graffiti and post-consumer waste, he finds what is extraordinary yet disconcerting in the reality that surrounds us.
Since the 1970s, Robert Adams (b. 1937) has documented the changing landscapes of the American West in black and white photographs characterized by their directness and clarity. He transforms “the silence of light” that he sees on the prairies, in the woods and by the ocean into pictures that capture the beauty of nature, but also question our silence facing its destruction.
The series
Unearthing the Collection: American Narratives is presented by Columbia Global Centers | Paris and Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain. Join Senior Curator Leanne Sacramone and embark on a journey through the soundscapes, skyscapes, and landscapes of American artists from the collection of the Fondation Cartier.
Host
Leanne Sacramone is currently Senior Curator at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris. She joined the staff at the Fondation Cartier in 2001 and has since organized close to twenty exhibitions. She has notably contributed to making known on the French art scene the history of graffiti in Born in the Streets: Graffiti (2009), the art of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Beauté Congo-Congo Kitoko (2016) and the work of Latin American photographers in America Latina (2013). Leanne values the wide-ranging and cross-disciplinary programming of the Fondation Cartier, which has led her to collaborate with painters and sculptors, photographers, designers, comic strip artists, and thinkers. Born in Salem, Massachusetts, she has been based in Paris since 1992. She studied French Language and Literature at Smith College and Art History at the Ecole du Louvre and the Université Paris I Sorbonne.
Organizers
Columbia Global Centers | Paris addresses pressing global issues that are at the forefront of international education and research: agency and gender; climate and the environment; critical dialogues for just societies; encounters in the arts; and health and medical science.
The Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain is a private cultural institution whose mission is to promote all fields of contemporary artistic creation to the international public through a program of temporary exhibitions, live performances and lectures.
Venue
Nestled in the Montparnasse district, Reid Hall hosts several Columbia University initiatives: Columbia Global Centers | Paris, the Institute for Ideas and Imagination, Columbia Undergraduate Programs, M.A. in History and Literature, and the GSAPP Shape of Two Cities Program. This unique combination of resources is enhanced by our global network whose mission is to expand the University's engagement the world over through educational programs, research initiatives, regional partnerships, and public events.
The views and opinions expressed by speakers and guests do not necessarily reflect the official policies or positions of Columbia Global Centers | Paris or its affiliates.
