Barbara Chase-Riboud with ‘Time Womb,’ 2022 © Barbara Chase-Riboud. Photo: Virginia Harold. Courtesy Pulitzer Arts Foundation
Barbara Chase-Riboud Exhibition Across Eight Major Museums in Paris
‘Everytime A Knot is Undone, A God is Released’ is on view at Musée d’Orsay, Palais de la Porte Dorée, Musée du Louvre, Philharmonie de Paris, Centre Pompidou, Musée du Quai Branly, Musée Guimet and Palais de Tokyo
‘Barbara Chase-Riboud. Everytime A Knot is Undone, A God is Released’ is the first multi-museum exhibition of a single artist to be presented in Paris during their lifetime. On view across eight major Parisian institutions—Musée d’Orsay, Palais de la Porte Dorée, Musée du Louvre, Philharmonie de Paris, Centre Pompidou, Musée du Quai Branly, Musée Guimet and Palais de Tokyo—this presentation is a wide-ranging celebration of the work of the artist, spanning sculpture, drawing and poems created from 1958 to the present day.
Barbara Chase-Riboud’s (b. 1939) career spans seven decades, during which she travelled the world and developed an unparalleled mastery of form. This exhibition will present a series of monumental sculptures, which demonstrate the power of bronze and silk, at the heart of the sculptor’s work, weaving links between cultures, histories and materials.
Named after Barbara Chase-Riboud’s collection of poetry published in 2014, the exhibition offers the public a constellation of encounters with her work: sculptures, drawings and poems, created from 1958 to the present. Each museum presentation weaves a story illuminating its relationship to the art of Chase-Riboud, through works selected specifically to engage with the distinct museographic routes and the architecture of each museum.
Over the past seventy years, Chase-Riboud has charted new paths in sculpture, juxtaposing the most prestigious materials—bronze with silk and wool—creating works where solidity and fluidity are not in contradiction but innovate a form, referencing both human and abstract, constantly futuristic while unearthing hidden histories.
Barbara Chase-Riboud, The sound of cascading coins, 2023 © Barbara Chase-Riboud. Photo: Nicolas Brasseur
Barbara Chase-Riboud, Standing Black Woman of Venice V, Nossis (AABB), 1969 – 2020 © Barbara Chase-Riboud. Photo: Alex Delfanne
For the first time since her solo exhibition at Musée D’Art Moderne in 1974, Chase-Riboud’s mastery of bronze and silk will be the subject of aesthetic discourse at the museums in the city of light, where she has been a resident since 1961.
This multi-museum exhibition highlights the exchanges and encounters of an artist who lives and creates in the present, with the art of the past. Through the gaze of Chase-Riboud, through this dialogue of unprecedented works, a rich artistic landscape is also offered to us, where the relevance of heritage for a major figure in contemporary sculpture is demonstrated. This unprecedented museum initiative will allow us to reread the artist’s work in the context of her life in Paris, which she recounts in her memoir, I Always Knew.
Barbara Chase-Riboud and ‘Bathers’ at her atelier in La Chenillère, 1969. Photo: Marc Riboud. Collection of Barbara Chase-Riboud and Marc Riboud © Marc Riboud / Fonds Marc Riboud au MNAAG / Magnum Photos
Musée d’Orsay
17 September 2024 – 15 December 2024
Palais de la Porte Dorée
1 October 2024 – 12 January 2025
Musée du Louvre
9 October 2024 – 6 January 2025
Philharmonie de Paris
12 October 2024 – 13 January 2025
Centre Pompidou
15 October 2024 – 6 January 2025
Musée du Quai Branly
15 October 2024 – 13 January 2025
Musée Guimet
16 October 2024 – 6 January 2025
Palais de Tokyo
17 October 2024 – 5 January 2025
Barbara Chase-Riboud and ‘Black Tower,’ with the Bonvicini brothers in Verona, Italy, 1973. Photo: Massimo Vitali
Barbara Chase-Riboud in her atelier at Rue Dutot, 1973. Photo: Marc Riboud
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‘Barbara Chase-Riboud. Everytime A Knot is Undone, A God is Released’ is sponsored by the Ford Foundation and Terra Foundation for American Art, and curated by Erin Jenoa Gilbert and Donatien Grau, Director of Contemporary Programs at Musée du Louvre.
Learn more about Barbara Chase-Riboud.
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