Dealer, collector, critic, publisher …: the « animateur d’art » and his multiples roles
Pluridisciplinary research of these disregarded cultural
mediators of the 19th and 20th centuries
The first goal of our symposium is to enlighten the role of the animateur
d’art in the development of the arts. We hope that this scientific
gathering would help us specify this first formula of the cultural actor :
“The animateur d’art is an amateur who actively participates in the
defense of the arts and in the stimulation of the artistic creation in a
certain period. He puts his numerous networks to work in order to
spread ideologies and aesthetics through the cultural environment
and the society. He is a key figure positioning himself as a mediator
between the different art worlds – the plastic arts as well as between
the different agents of the cultural environment. His work consists in
building bridges between the artists and his own cultural environment
in order to ease the reception of the works and to promote a peculiar
aesthetics”.