Georges Petitjean

George Petitjean

Georges Petitjean (Brussels, 1968) is curator and art advisor.

Georges Petitjean studied Film & Video at the Sint-Lukas Hogeschool voor Beeldende Kunsten (Brussels) and Kunstwetenschappen at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. In 2000 he got his doctorate at the La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. In his dissertation, Petitjean researches the passage of Aboriginal paintings of the productioncentra in the deserts of West- and Central-Australia to the extended artworld. He has worked several years in Australia and since 1992, follow the work of some artists in Central-Australia and the Kimberley closely.

In 2005, Georges Petitjean was appointed conservator of the Museum for contemporary Aboriginal Art – AAMU in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The position of Australian Aboriginal art -and non-European art in it’s entirety- in the extended (Western) contemporary artcontext particularly belongs to his field of interest. He was curator of numerous exhibitions at the AAMU among others: Theme Park (2008), Outsider/Insider. The art of Gordon Bennett (2012), BOMB (2013), BLAK. Forced into Images (2014-2015) and Mapping Australia (2016-2017).

He published several monographs, including Crossing Frontiers about the work of Paddy Bedford (Uitgeverij Snoeck, 2009). In 2010, he published Hedendaagse Aboriginal kunst: het AAMU en Nederlandse Verzamelingen (Uitgeverij Snoeck).

On the occasion of the closure of the AAMU in 2017, he curated the exhibition In the future, everything will be as certain as it used to be used to be at Framer Framed in Amsterdam. The exhibition consisted of a selection of works acquired by George Petitjean for the museum. On the occasion a symposium was organized on the collection policies of Dutch museums.