Authorial Lecture "The Great Disruption: Contemporary Art vs. Poussin’s Ideal Nature"
Villa Paloma, Monaco, April, 2026
About Lecture
This week in Monaco, we are leading an authorial lecture tour through one of the most ambitious exhibitions currently open in Europe — at Villa Paloma, perched above the Mediterranean, home to the NMNM's contemporary collection.
WHY has our relationship with nature — once a source of the sublime — become compressed, flattened, and mediated through screens? And what does art do to restore what we have lost?
We explore the works of nearly forty artists across six thematic spaces: storm and night, sea and waterfall, forest and garden, mountain and peak, flower and butterfly, desert and volcano — tracing how the natural world has been reimagined from the 17th century to today.
A PERSONAL LENS Through the paintings of Nicolas Poussin — master of the French Baroque — we build unexpected bridges to the present. Why does an image created 400 years ago speak more directly than a photograph taken yesterday?
HOW TO READ a contemporary work? How to develop the eye that sees not just what is shown — but what is meant?
THE ANATOMY OF AN EXHIBITION How does a curator construct meaning? What connects Giuseppe Penone, who works with the living tissue of trees, and Andreas Gursky, who turns nature into data and spectacle?
WHERE IS THE LINE between experiencing art as a sensory event and understanding it as a cultural statement?
A LIVE EXPERIMENT We look at works together — slowly, closely — and test what knowledge and intuition reveal differently.