Dr. Christel Hollevoet-Force — Celebrating Female Agency in the Arts
Dr. Christel Hollevoet-Force, Associate Research Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Force contributed to various Met catalogues on subjects ranging from the dealers Ambroise Vollard and Pierre Matisse to collectors such as Muriel Newman and Alfred Stieglitz, in addition to Picasso in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2010), and Matisse: In Search of true Painting (2013). She contributed to the proceedings of the symposia ‘Revoir Picasso’ (Musée Picasso in Paris, 2015), ‘Paris-Berlin: Réceptions Croisées’ (Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art, Paris, 2016), and ‘Collecting and Provenance’ (Israel Museum in Jerusalem, 2016). In 2017, she co-organized the symposia ‘Pioneers of the Global Art Market’ at Christie’s Education, and ‘The Brummer Galleries in Paris and New York’ at The Met. She received her PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center, her MA from McGill University, and her Licence from the Université Libre de Bruxelles. Force held curatorial positions at the Whitney Museum of American Art (Independent Study Program), the Museum of Modern Art (1990–99), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (2000), and MoMA again (2001–5). Force is on the steering committee of the German/American Provenance Research Exchange Program for Museum Professionals (2017–19).
Force is the chair of the ‘Against All Odds: Women Curators and Directors in Art Museums Before 1960’ session at our upcoming ‘Celebrating Female Agency in the Arts’ conference. She will be joined by fellow speakers Dr. Yao-Fen You, Prof Dr. Rainer Stamm, Gloria Köpnick, Dr. Wiebke Gronemeyer and Dr. Adrian Sudhalter. This session proposes to celebrate the achievements of pioneering women curators whose careers bloomed before 1960, with an overview of their trials and triumphs — launching new curatorial departments, defining heretofore uncharted fields of research and collecting, rising to the top of the ladder, and playing seminal roles within their museums and beyond. This session is a springboard to reflect on the specific challenges, distinct merits, and broader significance of women’s careers within the history of art museums.
To register for the conference visit: http://www.christies.com/exhibitions/christies-education-conference-celebrating-female-agency-arts
