Visual
Arts
Performing
Arts
Forum for Culture
and Society
Film
Literature
Publications
Festivals
The Arts Arena presents lectures by and conversations with international artists, museum directors, curators, scholars, and critics in the fields of painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, video art, and architecture; visits to artist studios; and exhibitions.
Highlights of past events include:
- Artists Daniel Buren, Richard Texier, Laurent Grasso, Isabelle de Borchgrave, Philippe Rebuffet, Stephen McClymont
- Curator, scholar, artist, Commissioner of the Venice Biennale (2007) and former Senior Curator at MoMA (New York), Dean of the Yale School of Art Robert Storr, who has six times delivered the Yale Arts Arena Lecture
- Laurent Le Bon, curator of Jeff Koons at Versailles, formerly Director of the Centre Pompidou-Metz, currently President of Paris’s Musée Picasso
- James Welu, then Director of the Worcester Art Museum
- Susan Sterling, Director of the New Museum of Women in the Arts
- Renowned photography specialists Vicki Goldberg and Fred Ritchin
- Art historians Anne Poulet, Director Emerita of The Frick Collection, Stephen Scher, curator of Medieval and Renaissance art exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art, The Frick Collection, and The Metropolitan Museum (New York)
- New Media Showing Art, Stéphane Bezombes and Company
- Amin Jaffer, International Director of Asian Art, Christie’s, formerly of the Victoria & Albert Museum, author, notably of Made for Maharajas
- Screenings, e.g., Basquiat, The Desert of Forbidden Art, and the Academy Award-winning documentary about a young homeless artist, Inocente
- Exhibitions, e.g., Philippe Gras’s original photographs of the 1976 production of Einstein on the Beach (Robert Wilson and Philip Glass), Man on the Moon, a collection of hundreds of original NASA shots of space exploration (with Door Studios), photography by Isabelle Boccon-Gibod, Photography and Human Rights, artist Stephen McClymont Retrospective, and, the festival Iranian Arts NOW, a month-long exhibition of work by artists living in Iran and Iranian artists living outside of Iran, including video paintings by Shoja Azari and a workshop with Fred Richin and Shirin Neshat. For further information, please visit www.iranianartsnow.org
- Jean Fritts, International Chairman and Director for African & Oceanic Arts, Sotheby’s
Upcoming Spring 2015:
March 8: ArtsArenaPLUS members on a private tour of Musée national Picasso.
March 10: Laurent Le Bon, Président du Musée national Picasso
March 31: Robert Storr delivering the 7th Yale Arts Arena Lecture
Other events in the visual arts will be announced as they are confirmed.
The Arts Arena invites internationally renowned actors, choreographers, composers, theatre directors, musicians, playwrights, and puppeteers to give lectures and participate in conversations regarding their performances.
Highlights of past events include:
- A conversation with avant-garde theater director Robert Wilson, famed dancer and actor Mikhail Baryshnikov, and actor Willem Dafoe about Wilson’s adaptation of The Old Woman by Daniil Kharms
- Composer, musician, and singer Rufus Wainwright
- Lucinda Childs, choreographer and performer in Robert Wilson and Philip Glass’s iconic opera Einstein on the Beach and founder of the Lucinda Childs Dance Company
- Roman Paska’s Echo in Camera, an extraordinary theatrical production featuring exquisite meter-tall puppets, conceived and produced at the Watermill Center and performed at the Palais de Tokyo
- Performances by vocalists and Curtis Institute of Music Award laureate Alexander Ullman from the prestigious Curtis Institude of Music
- A recital by award-winning artists Claudia Rosenthal and David Leigh from the Yale School of Music at the Hôtel Talleyrand
- The great Swiss-born actor Stefan Kurt, who has starred in the Berliner Ensemble’s The Black Rider and The Three Penny Opera and made over 50 films, and who more recently played Captain Hook in Robert Wilson’s Peter Pan
- Actors Workshop with Elizabeth Kemp of The Actors Studio, New York City
- British theater director Dan Jemmett, who, after receiving the French critics Révélation Théâtral prize (2002) became the first British director ever invited to work at the Comédie Francaise
- Conductor and harpsichordist William Christie, founder of the world-renowned vocal and instrumental ensemble Les Arts Florissants, Commandeur de la Légion d’Honneur and a member of France’s Academy
- Soirée Balanchine with Balanchine dancers Violette Verdy and Suki Schorer and dance filmmaker Dominique Delouche
- Dreamstories, stage production by L’Escaleir4
- Christopher Williams and Gregory Spears, creators of Wolf in Skins, a dance-opera developed at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center
- A series of films on great dancers and choreographers in collaboration with the Cinémathèque de la Danse
- Arts Arena Plus avant-premières of Robert Wilson’s Les Nègres at the Théâtre de l’Odéon, Dan Jemmett’s Hamlet at the Comédie Française, private discussion with Ellen Sorrin, Director of the George Balanchine Trust and former Balanchine dancer Colleen Neary and ballet master Paul Bos, prior ti the Paris Opéra Ballet’s production of Balanchine works, special trip to the Baroque festival Dans les Jardins de William Christie and tea with him at his home, private discussion with Lucinda Childs before the performance of her iconic work Dance at Paris’s Théâtre de la Ville.
- Isabelle Huppert, world-renowned award-winning actress, in conversation with Arts Arena founder Margery Arent Safir
- William Christie on harpsichord, vocalists and musicians from Les Arts Florissants in a concert of French cantatas and air de cours at the Hôtel de Talleyrand
Spring 2015:
January 25: Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota, Director of Théâtre de la Ville in conversation with Arts Arena founder Margery Arent Safir
January 30: ArtsArenaPLUS at the Opéra Comique for Les Fêtes vénitiennes, with William Christie, Les Arts Florissants, and director Robert Carsen
February 11: The Arts Arena Curtis Institute of Music Award concert, with the Aizuri Quartet at Hôtel de Talleyrand
April 14: The Yale School of Music Arts Arena Recital
June 2: The Arts Arena Watermill Performance
Other events in the performing arts will be announced as they are confirmed.
The Arts Arena serves as a forum for culture and society, and organizes cultural events related to human rights, the environment, urban planning, and social development in the form of film screenings, conferences, and multidisciplinary festivals.
Highlights of past events include:
- Vin Cipolla and Frederick Iseman, respectively President and Vice Chair of the Municipal Art Society of New York, in conversation about the role of the arts in intelligent urban design, planning, and preservation
- Each year the Arts Arena presents the United Nations Association Film Festival/Traveling Film Festival with a selection of documentaries dealing with human rights, the environment, development and other social and economic issues, as well as the European film festival L’Europe autour de l’Europe
- Screening of Andrew Shea’s Portrait of Wally, an award-winning documentary on the subject of restoration to the rightful owners of artwork confiscated by the Nazis, followed by a conversation with veteran arts-news reporter David D’Arcy and investigative journalist Philippe Sprang.
- The inaugural Festival des Ecrivains du Monde, organized by Paul LeClerc, Director of Columbia Global Centers | Europe and Bruno Racine, President of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and under the direction of Caro Llewellyn, the Festival brings together 30 of the world’s most eminent writers, among them: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, John Banville, Richard Ford, David Grossman, Ma Jian, Amin Maalouf, Petros Markaris, Cathrine Millet, Michael Ondaatije, Salman Rushdie, and Edmund White
- In June-July 2012, the Arts Arena presented a month-long multidisciplinary festival of contemporary Iranian arts, Iranian Arts NOW (iranianartsnow.org), bringing together 20 artists living inside Iran today and 20 Iranian artists of the diaspora as well as a screening of Iranian films
- The Arts Arena has also presented Photography and Human Rights; The Power to Do: Philanthropy, Art, and Sustainable Development; Activist Arts, in partnership with UNESCO, Beyond the Biennale: Architects as Activists; and Culture in Conflict/Culture on the Move, in partnership with the Aspen Institute.
Spring 2015:
April 5, L’Europe autour de l’Europe Festival, screening of Is the Man Who is Tall Happy? with Michel Gondry and Noam Chomsky
May 10-11, United Nationsl Association Film Festival/Traveling Film Festival
June 16, the inaugural annual The Arts Arena/Municipal Art Society: Paris-New York Series on Cities, featuring acclaimed landscape architect Thomas Woltz, named Designer Innovator of the Year by the Wall Street Journal
The Arts Arena organizes film screenings, festivals, and conversations with actors, directors, producers, and critics.
Highlights of past events include:
- Richard Peña, former Program Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Director of the New York Film Festival, presenting early independent black filmmakers
- Each year the Arts Arena presents the United Nations Association Film Festival/Traveling Film Festival with a selection of documentaries dealing with human rights, the environment, development and other social and economic issues, as well as the European film festival L’Europe autour de l’Europe
- Screening of Andrew Shea’s Portrait of Wally, an award-winning documentary on the subject of restoration to the rightful owners of artwork confiscated by the Nazis, followed by a conversation with veteran arts-news reporter David D’Arcy and investigative journalist Philippe Sprang.
- A tribute to the great performer and humanitarian Danny Kaye on his centennial, with screenings and a talk by his daughter Dena Kaye
- Jacqueline Caux discussing her documentary, begun by her late husband Daniel Caux, The Colors of the Prism, Mechanics of Time, which examines the astoundingly prolific period of music from the mid-1960s to the beginning of the 21st century in the US and UK.
- A Sunday morning screening of Le Mystère Babilée shown with original archival material, together with Jean Babilée, live from Dakar
Past events and publications include:
- A conversation about Wash, the first novel by writer, filmmaker, educator, and visual artist Margaret Wrinkle, and the winner of the 2013 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize of The Center for Fiction and the American Book Award.
- The Arts Arena’s first full-format volume, Balanchine Then and Now, edited by Anne Hogan, was published in April 2008. This book features contributions from leading dancers, choreographers, company directors, critics, and academics that assess Balanchine’s legacy and his relevance to the history of dance.
- In October 2011, the Arts Arena published Robert Wilson from Within, edited by Margery Arent Safir, available in both French and English editions. Among the many contributing authors are Marina Abramovic, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Jonathan Harvey, Isabelle Huppert, Yvonne Rainer, Rufus Wainwright, and Robert Wilson himself, who selected and annotated a series of personal photographs specifically for this publication.