Inauguration of the Hannon Chair.
Colour in 1900 : knowledge, practices, aesthetics. Lecture by Michel Pastoureau
The Collège Belgique is joining forces with the Maison Hannon, an Art Nouveau museum in Brussels, to launch a chair in its name. Reflecting the Belgian and French tastes of its patrons, Marie and Édouard Hannon, the Maison Hannon embodies an antique idealism tinged with modernity. Light, architecture, art and poetry come together here to create a total work of art. Symbolist in its décor, scientific and industrial in its inhabitants, the Maison Hannon crystallises the thirst for modernity of a fin-de-siècle world. It is this world of artistic, scientific and industrial ferment that is explored within the Hannon Chair. The inaugural session of the Chair will welcome Professor Michel Pastoureau on 9 October 2025 for a presentation on the understanding and knowledge of colour in 1900.
Michel Pastoureau, born in Paris in 1947, is a French medieval historian specialising in the cultural history of colours, emblems, heraldry, sigillography and animals. After studying at the École nationale des chartes, he became a paleographer archivist in 1972, then curator at the Cabinet des médailles. In 1983, he was appointed director of studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, where he teaches the history of Western symbolism. The author of more than forty books translated into several languages, he is best known for his series on colours (Blue, Black, Green, Red, Yellow, White, Pink) and his studies on animals (The Bear, The Pig, The Wolf, The Bull, The Raven, The Whale, The Donkey).
The Collège Belgique is the establishment for knowledge dissemination of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium, whose mission is to make essential and critical knowledge available to the public in a resolutely scientific, humanistic, pluralistic and democratic framework. With a presence in six cities in French-speaking Belgium and three abroad, the Collège organises nearly 120 free scientific activities for the general public every year, covering all disciplines. The lectures are given by figures renowned for their expertise in their field. They generally last two hours (5pm-7pm) and take place on weekdays from September to June.
Location
Hôtel de Ville de Saint-Gilles,
Place Van Meenen 39, 1060 Saint-Gilles