Home » Interviews » Axelle Liautaud: Curator, Collector, Designer, Promotor of Haitian Art

Axelle Liautaud: Curator, Collector, Designer, Promotor of Haitian Art

Introduction to Axelle Liautaud. 1:41 min. Interview: Raymond Elman. Post-Production: Lee Skye. Music: Simon Mathewson. Recorded at Green Space, Miami. 5/25/2023.

AXELLE LIAUTAUD is a Haitian art historian and curator. She is also a designer who works with artists and craftsmen to create unique items. She began visiting Le Centre d’Art and other art galleries from a very young age, thereby gaining an introduction to art. For 30 years, she worked to promote Haitian art and crafts in Europe and the United States. With Virgil Young, she organized a collection of artwork in collaboration with great American artists such as Keith Haring and Alison Saar. She has collaborated with many museums in preparing exhibitions of Haitian art—most notably, the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles for The Sacred Art of Vodou (1995). The Sacred Art of Vodou show traveled to major museums from 1995 to 1998 including The Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, the National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC, The Museum of Natural History, NY, and the New Orleans Museum of Art. She also collaborated with the Frost Art Museum in Miami for Lespri Endepandan (2004). She has been the curator of exhibitions at the Museum of Naive Art in Paris (Halles St. Pierre) (1988), as well as the Organization of American States in Washington (1999), and the Bass Museum in Miami for the Allegories of Haitian Art exhibition, where the filmmaker Jonathan Demme’s collection was put on display (2006).

Axelle has been a member of Le Centre d’Art’s Board of Directors since 1997 and became Acting President following the 2010 earthquake, the death of Francine Murat, and the collapse of the Centre’s building. After the earthquake, she led efforts to rescue the collections from the rubble, including 4,000 paintings, more than 1,000 sculptures, 500 works on paper, and the largest art and cultural archives in Haiti. In collaboration with the Smithsonian Haiti Cultural Recovery Project, the art and documents were preserved and eventually returned to the Centre d’Art. As president of the Centre, she organized the Piasa Art Auction in Paris in 2017 and curated the Jasmin Joseph show that opened in Port-au-Prince in 2016 and traveled to various museums in France. Axelle stepped down from her role at Le Centre d’Art in 2021.

In 2023, Axelle curated an exhibition of Shneider Hilaire’s paintings of Haitian rituals for GREEN SPACE, which was founded by Kimberly Green and the Green Family Foundation. Watch our ArtSpeak video conversation with Kimberly Green here: https://artspeak.fiu.edu/interviews/kimberly-green/

The videos are organized by Success Factor, and run between 30 seconds and 4 minutes. Click on any video. You must be connected to the Internet to view the videos.

INSIGHT & INSPIRATION: 1:34 min.

Where did you grow up, and what was your first awareness of art of any discipline?

CRITICAL THINKING: 3:19 min.

To what extent was the Haitian art you grew up with influenced by Afro-Caribbean art?

UNDERSTANDS ARTISTS’ NEEDS: 2:10 min.

In 2019, the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami presented an exhibition of Haitian urban art (post-earthquake), which included many pieces constructed from street rubble.

CRITICAL THINKING: 2:06 min.

Some people say that art with vitality and energy is more likely to grow out of turmoil and deprivation than from artists living in comfortable circumstances.

UNDERSTANDS THE BUSINESS OF ART: 1:25 min.

I would like to see a comparative matrix of the effect of success on the quality of work produced by rising artists. Some successful artists merely repeat themselves for the rest of their careers.

UNDERSTANDS THE BUSINESS OF ART: 0:50 sec.

Once young artists have some success with selling their work through galleries, the gallerists often tell the artists to stay with the formula that proved successful.

CRITICAL THINKING: 0:47 sec.

What is the role of serendipity in the arts?.

UNDERSTANDS THE BUSINESS OF ART: 1:33 min.

How much are Haitian visual artists influenced by the off-island art world?

COMMUNITY VALUES: 1:21 min.

It seems like Haiti is always in turmoil caused by politicians, or gangs, or Mother Nature.

CRITICAL THINKING: 0:48 sec.

I have watched the blossoming of the Miami Haitian community over the past 20 years. Does the strength of the Haitian community in Miami help the Haitian community in Haiti?

CREATES A UNIQUE PERSONAL BRAND: 3:06 min

Tell us about the arc of your career in the arts.

UNDERSTANDS ARTISTS’ NEEDS: 1:56 min.

One of the things I loved about the Provincetown art community is that all the artists would attend book and poetry events and all the writers would attend art openings. I don’t see that happening in Miami, perhaps because everything is so far flung.

COLLABORATION: 1:42 min.

It seems to me that you have been teaching people to appreciate non-traditional art forms. Do you think of yourself as an educator?

INSIGHT & INSPIRATION: 2:21 min

Many of the openings of Haitian art exhibitions at Green Space include the performance of Haitian rituals. Are rituals more a part of the daily life in Haiti than they are in other countries?

INSIGHT & INSPIRATION: 1:42 min.