Art Basel Paris is a major event bringing together hundreds of galleries and artists, from October 18 to 20, 2024. But it's also a whole program of activities and events to be discovered all over Paris and the Île-de-France region.
In Paris museums, art often takes the form of paintings, sculptures or even videos. But during the week of the Art Basel Paris fair, there are no limits! This international fair dedicated tocontemporary art brings together hundreds of galleries and artists at the Grand Palais. It also offers a range of exhibitions for you to discover off-site.
In addition to these events, there are a number of side events. Open doors, exhibitions, conferences and debates, installations... A wide range of events awaits you in some very unusual locations! Would you like to take advantage of all this parallel programming, from October 15 to 20, 2024? Here's a selection of events to enjoy during Art Basel Paris, the showcase for contemporary art in Paris and the Paris region.
Please note that not all Art Basel Paris events are free of charge or open to the public: please enquire at each participating venue, or consult the event details on the fair website.
Events and meetings not to be missed during Art Basel Paris 2024:
- Conversations (event at the Petit Palais)
Access to the Conversations is free and open to all. We advise you to reserve your place. Doors will open 10 minutes before the start of the event. Please save the event in your calendar to receive a reminder and access your free ticket on the Art Basel app. You can also register on site on a first-come, first-served basis.
- October 17
NilYalter: 1pm-2pm
Winner of the Golden Lion 2024 at the Venice Biennale for her entire career, Nil Yalter is a committed artist. From her participation in May '68 - then in the second feminist wave and the fight for sexual liberation - to her denunciation of the treatment of immigrants in the West, her work is the voice of those who have no right to the city. This conversation traces the career of an artist whose polymorphous practice is finally receiving the attention it deserves.
Galleries, the new institutions? 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm (in English)
The gap between some of the world's leading commercial galleries and institutions continues to narrow, at least on the surface. At a time when the art market is changing, more and more galleries are calling on institutional figures to develop their research, residency and exhibition programs. Have galleries become an extension of public institutions?
- October 18
Cultural crossroads: Hong Kong, Shanghai, Abu Dhabi: 1 pm - 2 pm
As the art world's center of gravity continues to shift, this panel looks at changes in museum practices. Focusing on the new art hubs of Hong Kong, Shanghai and Abu Dhabi, it explores how different histories have shaped new art organizations at a global level, and their impact on current international cultural exchanges.
Museumsand transgression 2:30 - 3:30 pm (in English)
The artistic avant-garde has never ceased to transgress the rules of the institutional game, whether to transform them or expose their limits. From Pontus Hultén's ambition to create a museum without walls with the Centre Pompidou to Andrea Fraser's parodic one-upmanship on the museum as a site of artistic genius, this institution has been torn apart, both internally by pioneering museum figures, and externally by artists. What is the relationship between museums and transgression?
Dakar: Nouvelle vague Atlantique: 4pm-5pm
From Léopold Sédar Senghor - thinker of negritude and first president of Senegal in 1960, who encouraged the emergence of cultural avant-gardes - to the effervescence created by institutions such as Raw Material Company and the Dakar Biennale, the Senegalese capital is a stronghold of the West African art scene. Between institutional experimentation, avant-garde cinema and contemporary art scenes, this discussion looks at the forces and questions that run through the city and this region of Africa.
The street against Babylon: Urban avant-garde resistance: 5:30-6:30 pm (in English)
Hip-hop, graffiti and dub poetry were born in reaction to oppression and racism in Western megalopolises such as New York in the 1970s. Both tools of resistance and means of artistic emancipation for racialized people and the disenfranchised, these multiple actions in the urban environment stand in opposition to Babylon, the metaphorical repository of former colonial or coercive power, erected as an asphalt fortress, and thus haunted by its past. This discussion looks at the history of forms that, from clubs to city walls, have transformed metropolises into a theater of poetic initiatives.
- October 19
Beyond Price: Alternative Value Systems in Contemporary Art: 1pm-2pm
When we talk about the value of a work of art, we often think of its price. However, price, and in particular auction price, is only part of the story: what happens in the case of artists whose work is not readily available on the market, artists in the formative years of their career or in a period of rapid evolution? This is what alternative valuation systems attempt to do, taking into account data sets based on museum and gallery exhibitions, among other indicators. Using all available information, they assign a value to an artist based on how, where and how quickly his or her work is exhibited.
The grotesque, the bad, and the ugly: 14h30-15h30 (in English)
One of the modern aesthetic turning points crystallized in the pen of Arthur Rimbaud when, in 1873, he wrote in A Season in Hell: "One evening, I sat Beauty on my lap - And I found her bitter. - And I reviled her." In the wake of these words, the ugly, the grotesque and the bad have become the seeds of an artistic revolution that, from Marcel Duchamp to Isa Genzken, has overturned our relationship to art by rejecting the idea of good taste. This discussion brings together contemporary artists who have made Rimbaud's phrase their own, pushing art to its formal limits.
Paris queer, from salons to interzones: 4pm-5pm
At the beginning of the 20th century, Paris was one of the metropolises of the homosexual artistic avant-garde. From Natalie Clifford Barney's Temple of Lesbian Friendship to Claude Cahun's intimate self-portraits, from Christian Bérard's gay counter-modernism to Jean Cocteau's "heretical" work, from Hervé Guibert's photographs to Guillaume Dustan's autofictional films, Paris remained one of the bastions of dissident love. Recently the focus of several books and exhibitions, this militant and exalted history will be evoked through works, places and figures, both living and dead, in a Paris that still seems to be one of the epicenters of queer culture.
Jean Genet: Thief, saint, and militant: 17h30-18h30 (in English)
Jean Genet (1910-1986) was a thug, a militant, a writer, a director and a playwright who harbored an anger against the very idea of institution, whether prison or state. Between his rough, mannerist aesthetic, his sojourns in prison, his tales of heady sexuality and his commitments against the tyranny of power, he spent his life restoring dignity to the margins. At a time when previously unpublished projects are being rediscovered and exhibited, this discussion will look at the fascination he continues to exert on artists, without obscuring the darker sides of his writings.
- Performance | Christian Falsnaes, GLITCH, 2024
A performance organized in collaboration with Le Bicolore - Maison du Danemark
October 17, 2024 between 11 a.m. and 8 p.m. at the Grand Palais
Danish artist Christian Falsnaes creates a collective performance in which four people, who have nothing to suggest that they are not art fair regulars, behave normally until their bodies malfunction. In the manner of nonplayer characters (video game extras), our fake art world socialites, hitherto used to the exercise, assume grotesque positions, underlining in negative the well-oiled choreography of bodies in this type of event.
- Soirée "Chaillot invite POUSH"
Théâtre National de Chaillot, Paris October 15, 2024 6:30 pm to 11 pm
A musical, performative and festive artistic proposal around mysticism, the notion of rite and passage, sublimating the architecture of the Foyer de la Danse, echoing the exhibition organized at POUSH at the time: Par la fumée.
Free admission
With this program, it's impossible to remain indifferent to this week dedicated tocontemporary art in Paris! For the official program of the fair, see our dedicated article. Shall we go, friends?
Art Basel Paris 2024: the contemporary art fair returns to the Grand Palais and Paris
The international contemporary art fair Art Basel Paris is finally back at the Grand Palais for another edition. The event awaits you from October 18 to 20, 2024. [Read more]
Art Basel Paris 2024: the contemporary art fair returns to the Grand Palais and Paris
