An Interview with Debra Bricker Balken and Lynn Gumpert, curators of Americans in Paris: Artists Working in Postwar France, 1946-1962 (Grey Art Gallery, 2024)—Part One

Abstract

Projected to open in February 2024 at the Grey Art Gallery of NYU, Americans in Paris: Artists Working in Postwar France, 1946-1962 examines the work of approximately seventy artists who lived in Paris for a period during the two decades following World War II. The following is the first of a two-part interview with the show’s curators, Debra Bricker Balken and Lynn Gumpert. In this first part, the organizers discuss the relationship of Americans in Paris to other shows, their research process, and the critical choices and layout decisions they made during the conception phase of the exhibition. As this interview reveals, the curators aimed to challenge the assumption that all art of the period fell under the rubric of “Abstract Expressionism” (or the “New York School”). The exhibition and its accompanying three-hundred-page catalogue showcases instead the diversity of US art genres and artists emerging from Paris during the period.

Keywords

• diversity
• Abstract Expressionism
• GI bill
• post-war US art
• mid-twentieth century