Panel discussion with Matthew Affron, Ellen McBreen, and Denise Murrell, moderated by Victor Sainsot
In March 2026, several major exhibitions – at the Grand Palais in Paris and at the Baltimore Museum of Art – renew attention to the work of Henri Matisse. These exhibitions provide an opportunity to reconsider current Matisse scholarship in the United States and to explore the artist’s complex relationship with the American continent.
In early 1930, Matisse crossed the Atlantic and arrived in New York – the first step in a transformative artistic journey that would lead him to the West Coast, to Tahiti, and then to the West Indies. Who were the interlocutors (curators, collectors, models), the stopovers, and the landscapes that shaped his voyage? To what extent did these American motifs influence his artistic practice both during his travels and upon his return to France? This discussion aims to move beyond the anecdotal dimension of the journey to examine the symbolic and aesthetic significance of Matisse’s transatlantic experience, with particular attention to the Martinican episode, often overlooked in art-historical narratives. Exploring the encounter between Matisse’s Western gaze and a world already marked by circulation, hybridity, and resistance allows us to re-situate his works within an expanded geography of modernity and to reassess the importance of the Interamerican moment in his creative trajectory.
