Watch the Keynote

The 2017 symposium, which aims to expand scholarship on the field of contemporary sculpture in its many forms, will address themes related to the work of the 2017 Nasher Prize Laureate, Pierre Huyghe. Known for his multifarious practice encompassing a variety of materials and disciplines, bringing music, cinema, dance, and theater into contact with biology and philosophy, and incorporating time-based elements that vary in intensity—as diverse as fog, ice, parades, rituals, automata, computer programs, video games, dogs, bees, and microorganisms—Huyghe has consistently sought new ways to bring together unconventional and heterogeneous materials into a practice exceeding the sum of its many parts.

Keynote Speaker Nicolas Bourriaud : Director of La Panacée art center, Montpellier, France

Nicolas Bourriaud (born 1965) is a French curator, writer, art critic, and author of theoretical essays on contemporary art. Bourriaud was the Gulbenkian curator of contemporary art at Tate Britain, London, where he curated The Tate Triennial: Altermodern (2009). He co-founded and was co-director of the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, from 1999 to 2006. He founded the contemporary art magazine Documents sur l'art, of which he was director from 1992 to 2000, and worked as a Parisian correspondent for Flash Art from 1987 to 1995. He was director of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, in Paris from 2011 to 2015. In 2015, he was appointed director of the future Contemporary Art Center of Montpellier, France, due to open in 2019. His writings have been translated into over 15 languages, and his publications include Radicant (Sternberg Press/Merve Verlag, New York/Berlin, 2009), Postproduction (Lukas & Sternberg, New York, 2002, English edition, Les presses du reel, Dijon, 2004, French edition), Formes de vie. L’art moderne et l’invention de soi (Editions Denoël, Paris, 1999), and Relational Aesthetics (Les presses du réel, 1998, French edition, English edition, 2002).

Moderator Pavel Pys : Curator of Visual Art, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Pavel Pys joined the Walker in 2015 after four years as Exhibitions & Displays Curator at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, England. Hailing originally from Warsaw, the Australian-Polish curator and writer has contributed to a range of solo and group exhibitions in the United Kingdom and beyond, including exhibitions with artists David Diao, Robert Filliou, Christine Kozlov, Katrina Palmer, Vladimir Stenberg and Sturtevant, as well as the group exhibitions Carol Bove / Carlo Scarpa (2015); The Event Sculpture (2014); Indifferent Matter: From Object to Sculpture (2013) and 1913: The Shape of Time (2012) at the Henry Moore Institute; We Will Live, We Will See (2011) at the Zabludowicz Collection (as part of the inaugural Zabludowicz Collection Curatorial Open); and To See an Object, To See the Light (2011), at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, Italy. His writing has appeared in numerous publications including ArtReview, Mousse, Frieze, and Art Monthly Australia and he has published essays on artists including Carol Bove, Michael Dean and Fredrik Værslev. Pys has also served on judging panels for the Aesthetica Art Prize and the Leonard James Little Fine Art Prize at the University of Manchester. 

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is the Presenting Sponsor of Nasher Prize. 

The Eugene McDermott Foundation and Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger are the Founding Partners. 

Nancy C. and Richard R. Rogers are the Laureate Sponsor. The Dallas Foundation is the Presenting Sponsor of Nasher Prize Month, with additional support generously provided by The Donna Wilhelm Family Fund. The Heart of Neiman Marcus Foundation is the Arts Youth Education Sponsor of Celebration Month. Sotheby’s is the Juror Conversation Sponsor.