Galleries, the new institutions?

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Sylvie Patry, Artistic Director, Mennour, Paris Dame Julia Peyton-Jones, Senior Global Director: Special Projects, Thaddaeus Ropac, London Moderator: Dr. Jeni Fulton, Head of Editorial, Art Basel
The gap between certain large commercial galleries and institutions keeps narrowing – or so it seems. At a time of rapid change in the art market, an increasing number of galleries have hired institutional figures to develop their research, residency, and exhibition programs. Are they becoming an extension of public institutions? How can a thoughtful curatorial program coexist with the ever more pressing commercial obligations most galleries are facing? This discussion looks at one of the fundamental transformations shaking up the institutional center of gravity in contemporary art.&nbsp;
Sylvie Patry has been artistic director of Mennour since 2022, where she initiated the Mennour Institute, encompassing doctoral fellowships in art history, educational and creative support programs, and philanthropic activities. Before that, she was the director of conservation and collections at the Musée d’Orsay and has also served as the deputy director of the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. She has curated various internationally acclaimed exhibitions on Impressionism and has worked in parallel with major living artists.


One of the most influential creative leaders of the modern era, Dame Julia Peyton-Jones graduated from the Royal College of Art before becoming a curator at the Hayward Gallery in 1988. In 1991, she was appointed the director of the Serpentine Galleries and over the next 25 years transformed the Serpentine into an internationally acclaimed visual arts institution with a reputation for architectural commissions. In recognition of her longstanding commitment to culture she was made a Dame of the British Empire in 2016. 
Dr Jeni Fulton is Art Basel’s Head of Editorial, leading the fair’s global content strategy and its digital magazine. She is the series editor for the Art Market Report and Survey of Global Collecting, co-published by Art Basel and UBS. She obtained her PhD on the subject of “Value and evaluation in 21st Century Art” from the Humboldt University in Berlin in 2017, and read Philosophy at the University of Cambridge for her undergraduate degree. She lectures on the art market, contemporary art history, and art and technology at Zurich’s University of the Arts (ZHdK), and teaches in the Executive Master’s in Art Market Studies at the University of Zurich.
The Art Basel Paris 2024 Conversations program is curated by Pierre-Alexandre Mateos and Charles Teyssou.

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