French Visiting Scholar Lecture Series: Jean-Baptiste Minnaert (Sorbonne University)

The Department of Art History is pleased to present the next installment of our French Visiting Lecture Series, featuring Jean-Baptiste Minnaert (Sorbonne University).

PLEASE NOTE: Registration Required

Art, Technology, and the Horizon: Jean Tschumi (1904-1962) and Postwar Corporate Architecture in Europe and North America
When: Thursday, April 24, 2025 - 5pm
Where: Massey College - Upper Library

Abstract:

Born near Geneva in 1904, the son of a carpenter and cabinetmaker, Jean Tschumi trained as a decorator at the Technicum in Bienne, Switzerland, before attending the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1923. Throughout the 1930s, Tschumi pursued activities as an architect-decorator; it was also through furniture and office decoration that the young Swiss architect approached corporate architecture. It was after World War II that his career flourished with significant commissions for factories and corporate headquarters in both Switzerland and France.

He distinguished himself on a larger scale with the Nestlé headquarters, built in Vevey near Lausanne from 1956 to 1960. The technical and aesthetic success of the Nestlé headquarters earned Tschumi the prestigious Reynolds Company award for the use of aluminum in 1960, and in the same year, he won the international competition for the headquarters of the World Health Organization in Geneva. Jean Tschumi's corporate architectures are a significant case of European Americanism. The conference will explore Jean Tschumi's achievements, highlighting the interplay between his early French references and his later American influences.
 

Bio:

Born in 1964, Jean-Baptiste Minnaert is a professor of contemporary art history. After teaching at the University of Tours (1994-2016), he now teaches at Sorbonne University. He is a member of the Centre André-Chastel (UMR 8150).
Specializing in the history of 20th-century architecture and urbanism, Jean-Baptiste Minnaert dedicated a book in 1991 to the architect-decorator Pierre Barbe, followed by his doctoral thesis on Henri Sauvage. He has published three books on this Parisian architect-decorator, inventor of the stepped construction system, a protagonist of Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and the beginnings of prefabrication: The Architectural Drawings of Henri Sauvage, 1994; Henri Sauvage, l’exercice du renouvellement, 2002; Henri Sauvage le rationaliste, 2011.
Jean-Baptiste Minnaert has worked on the architecture of the Parisian suburbs with the Atelier Parisien d'Urbanisme (Le faubourg Saint-Antoine, architecture et métiers d’art, 1998). He directed a book dealing with the historiography of architecture and contemporary heritage (Histoires d’architectures en Méditerranée, XIXe-XXe siècles, 2005) as part of a European project, Euromed Heritage II.
In parallel with his work on Tours in the 19th-21st centuries, a city to which he dedicated two books under his direction (Tours. Métamorphoses d’une ville, 2016 ; Saint-Pierre-des-Corps, cité des temps industriels, 2024), he conducted research on peri-urbanization (Périurbains, territoires, réseaux et temporalités, colloquium proceedings, 2013), in partnership with the Ministry of Culture.
He co-organized an exhibition at the Cité de l’architecture & du patrimoine and co-directed a book dedicated to the Franco-Swiss architect Jean Tschumi, the creator of corporate architectures such as the WHO headquarters in Geneva in 1965 (Jean-Tschumi architecte, 2021). He also co-authored a book dedicated to the Parisian department store La Samaritaine (La Samaritaine. Une renaissance architecturale. An architectural revival, 2022).
Jean-Baptiste Minnaert is preparing a Vocabulary of Contemporary Architecture, with Catherine Gros and Elsa Jamet, in partnership with the Ministry of Culture (to be published in 2028).