Photo © Philippe Levy
Serge Lasvignes, chairman of the board of the Centre Pompidou-Metz and Chairman of the Centre national d’art et de culture-Georges Pompidou, has appointed Chiara Parisi Director of the Centre Pompidou-Metz for a five year mandate beginning on 2nd December 2019.
The board of the Centre Pompidou-Metz proposed Chiara Parisi’s candidacy to Chairman Lasvignes, out of a list of candidates unanimously drawn up by a commission composed of public personalities represented on the board (the Centre Pompidou, the state, Metz Me?tropole, the Grand Est Regional Council and the City of Metz) as well as a recognized expert (Marie Lavandier, Director of the Louvre-Lens).
Chiara Parisi will therefore succeed Emma Lavigne, appointed Executive President of the Palais de Tokyo in September 2019 and Laurent Le Bon, Executive President of the Muse?e Picasso, who inaugurated the institution in Metz in 2010. “Chiara Parisi proposed for Centre Pompidou-Metz a strong artistic project that unanimously delighted the jury. I am very happy to be able, on the eve of the institution 10th anniversary, to count on her experience, her dynamic and creative spirit to take further, with her very own personality, the successful path laid down by Emma Lavigne” stated Serge Lasvignes concerning Chiara Parisi.
As an art historian, Chiara Parisi worked during five years as Director of Cultural Programmes at the Monnaie de Paris where she notably devoted an important monographical exhibition to the artist Marcel Broodthaers and organised the exhibitions on Maurizio Cattelan and Take Me (I’m yours) with Christian Boltanski and Hans-Ulrich Obrist. She has also been curator of exhibitions at the Acade?mie de France in Rome – the Villa Medici where she recently showed the work of Anne and Patrick Poirier and conceived the group exhibition Le Violon d’Ingres, at the crossroads of history of art and contemporary research. Numerous other projects have been entrusted to her, she was amongst others one of the invited curators for the Nuit Blanche in Metz in 2010, and then artistic director with Julie Pellegrin, of the Nuit Blanche in Paris in 2013.
About
Chiara Parisi is the holder of a state doctorate from the University of La Sapienza in Rome where she taught the history of modern and contemporary art as well as the history of architecture and industrial design. Her career path has been marked by the accompaniment of artists in their most unexpected and audacious adventures, in order to enable each one of them to achieve the intense experience of creation. She believes profoundly that art changes life and she will strive to convey this to the public through a close contact with the real world.
In 2011, she was appointed Director of Cultural Programmes of the Monnaie de Paris. Her ambitious programming made use of events on an urban scale such as Rob Pruitt’s Flea Market bringing together more then 80 artists, Stockhausen’s helicopter string quartet, the video installation by Mohamed Bourouissa in collaboration with the rapper Booba, or the project by John Baldessari, Your Name in Lights, a participative lighting installation in which over 100 000 people participated. In 2014, for the opening of the site, it was the artist Paul McCarthy who inaugurated the XVIIIth century salons on the banks of the Seine with his Chocolate Factory.
In 2016, Jannis Kounellis took over the spaces, and then it was the turn of Bertrand Lavier with a tribute to Raymond Hains. His artistic direction concluded with the largest exhibition ever presented in Europe by Maurizio Cattelan, Not Afraid of Love, thus marking the return of the artist’s work who had previously declared having brought his career to an end. By placing a multidisciplinary approach at the heart of her project, she organised the cycle « Factory » which, once a year, invited an artist to create a contemporary work for the Monnaie’s collections. Fabrice Hyber, Kerstin Bra?tsch, Chantal Akerman, Danh Vo? succeeded each other in this task.
In 2017, Chiara Parisi was appointed curator for the exhibitions at the Academie de France in Rome – the Villa Medici. Entitled Une, a new cycle of exhibitions devoted to women artists began with Annette Messager, then Claire Tabouret and Yoko Ono, Elizabeth Peyton and Camille Claudel, Tatiana Trouve and Katharina Grosse.
Ever mindful of the appropriation of art by the public, she had for the first time ever, the famous gardens of the Villa Medici opened at night for the exhibition Ouvert la nuit (Open at Night) which invited renowned artists to take over the sixteen mythical garden squares, artists including Rosa Barba, Trisha Donnelly, Elmgreen & Dragset, Felix Gonza?lez-Torres, Douglas Gordon, Hassan Khan, Lee Mingwei, Otobong Nkanga… Important exhibitions were also organized in honour of residents, falling somewhere between research work and production, as part of the cycle Loro.
From 2004 to 2011, Chiara Parisi was director of the International Centre for art and landscaping of the Island of Vassivie?re which due to her impetus, gave rise to original projects in the Aldo Rossi building as well as in the sculpture park, such as those by Claude Le?ve?que, Huang Yong Ping, Cyprien Gaillard, Oscar Tuazon, Thomas Houseago and Hubert Duprat, Marisa Merz, Rosa Barba, Victor Man, Bethan Huws. A large number of artists thus were able to produce their first monographical exhibition in France.
She has also put in place artists’ residencies conceived by the architects Berger&Berger and enriched the site with monumental works such as the skate-park OTRO designed by the artist Koo Jeong A or La Licorne Eiffel, an environmental sculpture by the architect Yona Friedman.
Chiara Parisi takes part in several commitees notably for the Italian Ministry of Culture, the National Museum of Monaco, the Frac Franche Comte?, The School of Visual Arts of the City of Monaco… In 2019, she was appointed Artistic Director for Public Procurement, Le?onard et le voyage (Leonard and the voyage), for Rome Airports.
