On the art fair outskirts: amateur and professional artists at the Paris musée d’Art moderne (1960-1975)

In 1971, most of the so-called “guild” amateur art fairs were forced out of the Paris Musée d’Art Moderne, which until then had hosted their annual exhibitions. This decision was the result of negotiations between the prefectural authorities and representatives of the professional art fairs, who were defending their own increasingly precarious position within the museum. An analysis of this process of exclusion reveals a “frontier work” that takes place on the periphery of the exhibition spaces, combining a rationale of segregation for amateur artists with a fragile rationale of representation of professional artists. By focusing on the issue of amateurs, the aim is also to emphasise the heuristic value of this problem for the social history of the artist’s profession, in which the amateur has been an integral part throughout the contemporary period.