Geschichte sucht ihren Ort. Ausstellung

Vernissage and round table with Yaëlle Biro, Jan Hüsgen, Mary-Ann Middelkoop and Anaëlle Vanel

29 April 2026
Centre Marc Bloch, Germaine Tillion-Saal & online
In English and French with simultaneous translation.
Please register online.
Registration

The starting point is a non-place of memory: the spot where the manuscript of Marc Bloch’s L’Étrange défaite was buried. It is a non-place that, by its very nature, eludes visibility and any definitive meaning, creating a tension between what is perceived and the construction of its meaning. Using a series of photographs whose subjects hover on the edge of the visible, eluding dominant narratives or unambiguous interpretations, the aim is to measure distances: the distance between history and its sites; between what has reached us and what once was; between the possible and the probable. It is within this distance that the image emerges.

Anaëlle Vanel is an artist. After graduating from the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts (ENSBA) in Lyon in 2014, she was a visiting student in Christopher Williams’ class at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2018. She has exhibited in France and abroad (IAC, Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes; Galerie Michèle Didier, Paris; Villa Médicis, Rome; Centre de la Photographie, Geneva; Kunsthalle der Sparkasse, Leipzig; Natural History Museum, Florence) and her works are held in several public (CNAP; IAC, Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes; FRAC Île-de-France) and private collections

Program

16:30-17:30 : Guided visit with the artist (16:30 in French, 17:00 in English)

18:00-18:15 : Welcoming remarks

18:15-19:30 : Traces, mémoires et indices, de Marc Bloch à la recherche de provenance / Traces, Memories, and Clues. From Marc Bloch to Provenance Research.

Panel discussion with Yaëlle Biro (Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art), Jan Hüsgen (German Lost Art Foundation, DZK), Mary-Ann Middelkoop (University of Cambridge) and Anaëlle Vanel.
Moderators: Julie Sissia (Provenance Research Fund), Fabien Théofilakis (Centre Marc Bloch).

19:30 Uhr: Opening of the exhibition „Geschichte sucht ihren Ort / L’histoire cherche son lieu“, guided tour with the artist and a get together at the Centre Marc Bloch

Partners

École Normale Supérieure de Lyon
Haut conseil culturel franco-allemand/ Deutsch-französischer Kulturrat
Direction de la mémoire, de la culture et des archives (DMCA), ministère des Armées
Sciences du Patrimoine : Héritage, Innovation, enjeuX (SPHINX), Sorbonne Université
Institut français d’Allemagne (IFA)
Fonds régional d’art contemporain d’Île-de-France (Frac Île-de-France)