Art Basel Paris 2026 – Conversations

Held for the first time in the Grand Palais Auditorium, Art Basel’s Conversations programme brings together major figures from across art and culture, alongside artist one-on-ones conversations. All panels are free and open to the public.

Among friends: Simone Fattal and Hans Ulrich Obrist. October 22, 2:15pm – 3pm

Simone Fattal and Hans Ulrich Obrist pick up their ongoing conversation. Taking Fattal’s forthcoming exhibition, ‘Cities at the Bottom of a Lake’ at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris – and her work in Art Basel Paris’ Public Program – as their point of departure, they revisit the questions and discoveries that have animated their exchange over the last decades. Much like the exhibition, their conversation will be expansive, covering half a century of work from early landscapes to ceramics and collages. Part trip down memory lane, part portrait at close range, it offers the rare pleasure of hearing two friends revisit some of Fattal’s major artistic achievements.

How do you build a monument? Eva Jospin and Laurent Dumas. October 22, 3:30pm–4:15pm

Each in their own way, collector Laurent Dumas and artist Eva Jospin have explored what happens when artists are free to express themselves on a monumental scale. Their collaboration includes La Traversée (2018), Jospin’s cardboard forest commissioned by Emerige for Beaupassage on the Left Bank in Paris. As Dumas opens Large, an ambitious art center on the Île Seguin, they discuss how commissions develop between artist and patron, and what it requires to take an idea from sketch to reality.

Can an experience be the artwork? Alexandre de Betak and Massimiliano Gioni. October 22, 4:45pm – 5:30pm

From mountaintop installations in Gstaad, Switzerland, to immersive fashion environments around the world, Alexandre de Betak creates temporary worlds designed to linger on in the mind. After decades shaping fashion’s visual language behind the scenes, he is now presenting his work as an artistic practice in its own right, using light and space to alter perception. In conversation with Massimiliano Gioni, de Betak reflects on this evolution and considers whether experience itself can become an artistic medium.

Museum futures: Centre Pompidou – the next 50 years. October 23, 11:30am – 12:15pm

Fifty years after the Centre Pompidou opened, its landmark building has closed for a major transformation. But renovation is only part of the story. In conversation with journalist Claire Chazal, Centre Pompidou President Laurent Le Bon looks beyond the 2030 reopening to ask what the institution should become over the next half-century. Together, they consider how it can remain both radical and popular if its identity extends beyond a single building, and what success would look like, not in 2030, but in 2077.

Artist one-on-ones | Ibrahim Mahama. October 23, 2:15pm – 3pm

For ‘Artist one-on-ones’, artists take to the Conversations stage for a closer look at their careers and recent projects. Ibrahim Mahama, a 2025 Art Basel Awards Gold Medalist, speaks to Aby Gaye-Duparc, curator of his first exhibition in Paris, ‘The Harvest Season’, at the Fondation Cartier. They discuss the cultural institutions the artist has founded in Tamale, northern Ghana, and how working with local communities has become central to his practice.

Artist one-on-ones | Zanele Muholi. October 23, 3:30pm – 4:15pm

‘Artist one-on-ones’ cedes the Conversations stage to artists for a deep dive into their careers and recent projects. Against the backdrop of ‘Remember Me’, a major exhibition marking the bicentenary of photography at the Bourse de Commerce, visual activist Zanele Muholi speaks to filmmaker and curator Pascale Obolo about the camera as a means of claiming a place in history. Bringing together two practices shaped by archives and marginalized narratives, they consider how images can resist erasure and who gets to be remembered.

Artist one-on-ones | Stanislava Kovalcikova. October 23, 4:45pm – 5:30pm

This focused dive explores the work of Stanislava Kovalcikova, newly awarded the 2026 Reiffers Initiatives Prize. Curator Caroline Bourgeois joins her to discuss a practice built up slowly through layers and revisions, populated by figures that can feel intimate or unsettling. Their conversation examines the peculiar psychology of Kovalcikova’s images and the theatrical environments she creates around them.

Museum futures: The Louvre’s renaissance. October 24, 11:30am – 12:15pm

Christophe Leribault took the helm of the Louvre in February 2026, charged with leading the world’s most-visited museum through a period of renovations and transformation. In conversation with journalist Claire Chazal, he looks beyond the practical demands of the ‘Louvre – Nouvelle Renaissance’ project to consider what the institution must become. How can millions of visitors be welcomed without reducing the Louvre to its most iconic exhibits? And how can the museum change while preserving the scholarship that lies at its core?

Painting beyond the canvas. October 24, 2:45pm – 3:30pm

For more than three decades, Swiss artist Renée Levi has developed a distinctive approach to painting in which color, gesture, scale, and the body are closely connected to architecture and the spaces in which her work is encountered. Her latest project, September (2026), a large-scale public commission for the Hayward Gallery in London, co-commissioned with Audemars Piguet Contemporary (APC), extends this exploration onto the gallery’s Brutalist façade. Levi and Audrey Teichmann, curator at APC, Audemars Piguet’s contemporary art program, are joined by moderator Nicolas Trembley to discuss the making of this ambitious work alongside Levi’s broader practice, and APC’s ongoing support of artists to develop new commissions.

How to build an artist’s legacy. October 24, 3:30pm – 4:15pm

The building of an artist’s legacy begins long before their death. Drawing on their work with artists and estates across generations, Pauline Pavec and Jeffrey Deitch examine how gallerists help secure an artist’s place in history, and the responsibilities they assume once that person is gone. What allows an artist to enter the canon? How can exhibitions and scholarship keep the work relevant without trapping it in a familiar story or attempting to repeatedly reinvent it? Moderated by Marine Van Schoonbeek, the discussion considers how reputations can be built to last.

Life as art: Jordan Roth and Linda Yablonsky. October 24, 4:45pm – 5:30pm

Seven-time Tony Award-winning Broadway producer Jordan Roth spent decades bringing other people’s visions to the stage. He is now sharing his own. This autumn, his installation To Think of the Tranquil Life of Things takes over the Hotel de Guise with photographs from Roth’s former apartment printed on textiles and draped over the furniture they depict, turning a record of domestic life into functional sculpture. In conversation with Linda Yablonsky, Roth asks what happens when life becomes material and a producer becomes an artist.