Audrey Azoulay, Minister of Culture and Communication, announces the holding of the sixth edition of the Festival of Art History, from June 3 to 5, 2016 at the castle and in the city of Fontainebleau.
Unique in Europe, this festival brings together art history experts from around the world and attracted more than 34,000 visitors in 2015. Designed as a crossroads of audiences and knowledge, this event, open to all and free of charge, offers for three days conferences, debates, concerts, exhibitions, projections, readings and meetings in Fontainebleau.
The 2016 programme, with more than 300 events, will be organised around three main events:
«Laughter», theme of the 6th edition of the festival
The Festival’s programming will focus on the cultural practices of laughter and the specificities of visual comedy. The iconography of laughers, the tradition of caricature, the Dada laughter or the press drawing and its use of laughter will be discussed.
Spain, Guest Country
Miquel Barceló, artist sponsor of the event, will deliver the inaugural conference.
Spain, land of artistic genius, has seen the birth of works by El Greco, Velasquez, Goya, Pablo Picasso and Pedro Almodovar. But it is also a home for many European artists and has made its mark throughout the continent. Spain is constantly traversed by tension between centres and peripheries, both in the Hispanic peninsula and in its relationship to the New World. The arts have accompanied and embodied the mutations, concerns and currents that have crossed it.
The News Forum
The forum will address current events in exhibitions and museums, the art market, research, teaching, but also major heritage issues, such as the looting of works of art or the protection of heritage in situations of armed conflict.
The 2016 programming is accompanied by:
- a book fair and art magazine,
- a "Art & Camera" cinema section,
-a Spring University, devoted to teaching the arts in schools and organised in partnership with the Ministry of Education, Higher Education and Research.
The Festival is also a program aimed at young people and families with:
- guided tours and presentations of works by students from the Louvre School and
Paris IV
- concerts by pupils of the Conservatoire national de musique et danse de Paris
- A “marathon du rire” proposed by the Comédie française, a new partner of the Festival
- an original arts and cultural education project, dubbed “Petit théâtre de cour”, the fruit of a 15-class work year
The organization of the festival is under the direction of a steering committee that brings together the General Directorate of Heritage of the Ministry of Culture and Communication, the National Institute of Art History and the Fontainebleau Castle. Its programming is provided by a scientific committee chaired by Pierre Rosenberg and led by Annick Lemoine (scientific director of the festival, Institut national d'histoire de l'art).
