Conferences

12:30pm - 2pm: Round table discussion on patronage and art

Moderated by Viviane Beoletto with Jean Hansmaennel, founder of the Industrie Magnifique movement, Nicolas Schulé, President of Cafés Sati, André Renaudin, President of the University of Strasbourg Foundation, François Bouillon, General Delegate of the Fondation de France Grand Est, and Isabelle Boucher-Doigneau, DRAC Grand Est

Cultural patronage as a means of transmitting values and tools for businesses.

Faced with the crisis in public funding and an uncertain social climate, cultural patronage and patronage in general must be creative and develop new opportunities.

• Is cultural patronage reserved only for large corporations?
• Cultural patronage: a new tool for promoting regional attractiveness?
• What opportunities are there for SMEs and micro-enterprises, and what are the benefits?

2.30pm - 3.30pm: Collecting with heart and strategy

Hosted by Virginie Tison, Founder and Curator of Art Trope Gallery (Stand 2B07), Art Coach and Art Professional School

Collecting a work of art is above all a matter of emotion: a dialogue between the artist's vision and the collector's feelings.

But beyond love at first sight, building a coherent and sustainable collection requires a real strategy.

Virginie Tison shares her expertise on how to combine passion and reason: structuring your collection, making informed choices, thinking about consistency and taking advantage of measures such as tax exemptions, leasing or support from a specialist accountant.

Finally, she discusses how to distinguish a professional artist from a non-professional artist through structure, approach and recognition of their career path.

5pm - 6pm: Textiles as relics of the past and living memories - The artist's creative process and origins

Hosted by Karine N'Guyen Van Tham

Karine N'guyen Van Tham - textile artist and poet - will invite us to follow in the wake of the significant events in her life where the textile object has established itself as a living poetic relic, as well as the major creative processes that enable her to bring her works to life.

Karine's works tell stories, fragments of lives, forgotten memories. But what memories are we talking about? How do they manifest themselves? How does the artist manage to channel them and breathe life into her works? These are just some of the questions that will be addressed and answered.

2pm - 3pm: Van Gogh, artificial intelligence and virtual reality

Hosted by Wouter van der Veen

Van Gogh specialist and exhibition curator Wouter van der Veen has experimented with cultural mediation assisted by artificial intelligence and virtual reality with a wide audience. More than 800,000 visitors were able to converse with a Van Gogh agent at the Musée d'Orsay, while another avatar was disconnected at the Château d'Auvers, a victim of its own inconsistencies. In virtual reality, poetic wonders have rubbed shoulders with more questionable creations: technology opens as many doors as it encounters walls. A nuanced assessment, looking to the future.

3:15 p.m. - 4:45 p.m.: The work of Elmar Trenkwalder as part of his exhibition at FRAC Alsace

Hosted by Anne-Virginie Diez

Elmar Trenkwalder is an Austrian artist, draughtsman, painter and sculptor, born in 1959. Ceramics is one of his predominant modes of expression.

His visions, nourished by multiple sources of inspiration, give rise to a world of abundant metamorphoses in which organic, architectural and plant forms intermingle profusely. Ten years ago, in 2015, the FRAC Alsace inaugurated ‘WVZ 284’, a monumental 5-metre-high gate with two pilasters and no grille, which Elmar Trenkwalder created for the entrance to the artistic garden of the Regional Contemporary Art Fund in Sélestat. From September to December 2025, to celebrate this anniversary, the FRAC Alsace is dedicating an exhibition entitled ‘Mysteries of Fusion,’ which offers an opportunity to discover the preparatory work and creative phases of several of the artist's projects.

© ADAGP, Paris, 2026

5pm - 6pm: Journey into the heart of creating a monumental work of art

Hosted by Richard Solti, Jean Hansmaennel, Jean-Marc Willer and Cassandre Albert

From sketch to production, the creation of a monumental work of art is a long process: a shared idea, a dialogue, a challenge. Refining the concept, finding the right partners, gathering the resources, producing, transporting, installing: these are all steps that reflect the rigour and commitment of an artist and the gallery that represents them. This round table discussion offers a behind-the-scenes look at the process through the journey of Cassandre Albert and her gallery Ritsch-Fisch in the creation of a monumental work designed using materials manufactured in Mauritius on the Plastic Odyssey boat.

12pm - 1.45pm: The revival of folklore in art today

Hosted by Mina Mond

In this age of globalisation, artificial intelligence and digital technology, contemporary artists are turning to folklore for meaning, memory and resistance. Local histories, traditional skills, folk tales and forgotten rituals are reappearing in contemporary works, reinvented and reinterpreted through a variety of media. This conference explores this movement to reclaim our intangible heritage in order to question our identities, revive shared imaginations and propose new ways of anchoring ourselves in today's world.

2pm - 3pm: Contemporary art and animals, zoological passions

Hosted by Chantal Rameau, Association des Amis du Musée Zoologique de Strasbourg, along with Daniel Payot, Germain Roesz and Valérie Etter

What leads an artist to take an interest in animals, particularly those found in a zoological museum, i.e. outside their natural context? How do they become inexhaustible sources of inspiration? Philosophers, artists and poets will attempt to answer these questions based on the book ‘L'imaginaire artistique d'un musée zoologique, un bestiaire strasbourgeois contemporain’ (The artistic imagination of a zoological museum, a contemporary Strasbourg bestiary), published by the Association des Amis du Musée Zoologique de Strasbourg and edited by the Association des Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg to mark the reopening of the Strasbourg Zoological Museum.

3:15 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.: The aquatic world and glass art

Hosted by Caroline Duchamp - Meisenthal Glass Museum, Véronique Brumm - Lalique Museum, Anne Pluymaekers - Cerfav, Sarah Guilaine - François Schneider Foundation

Fish, seahorses, jellyfish, swans, frogs, seaweed, coral, mermaids... populate the imagination of artists from the late 19th century to the present day. The aquatic world, whether real or fantastical, is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for many creators. This conference will focus on glass as a material in which the iconography of what grows and lives in or around water is displayed. This overview will take us from Art Nouveau to its presence in contemporary art, via Art Deco.

In turn, the directors of the Lalique and Meisenthal museums, the François Schneider Foundation and the Cerfav will take you on a captivating journey into the depths of this famous man-made substance, which is hard and brittle, transparent, opaque and sometimes highly colourful, known as glass.

4:45 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.: HEAR's activities at ST-ART

Hosted by Stéphane Sauzedde, Director of HEAR - Haute école des arts du Rhin

Discussing ‘what HEAR does at ST-ART’ in every sense of the term, Stéphane Sauzedde, Director General of HEAR, presents the artistic project of the leading creative arts school in the Alsace region.

For the past two years, HEAR has accompanied several young artists from its various programmes to ST-ART, allowing visitors to discover what concerns young artists in our turbulent times.

This year, a group of students from the painting workshops are presenting their work at ST-ART, and while the medium may seem typical for an art fair such as ST-ART, what these young artists express through their work is anything but typical. Their works are original, their approaches are committed, and HEAR is at ST-ART to share them.

©HEAR, workshop view, 2025 Graduation Festival. DR