PIA VIEWING
Curator & researcher at Jeu de Paume
Pia Viewing was born in Zimbabwe and trained in art history in France. Her early curatorial work took her to Amsterdam before a period at the International Centre for Art and Landscape in Vassivière, in the Limousin. From 2007 she directed the Centre Régional de la Photographie in Douche-les-Mines, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, overseeing the cross-Channel "Mission photographique Transmanche" in collaboration with photographers including Martin Parr, Josef Koudelka, and Lewis Baltz.
She joined the Jeu de Paume in 2014 as an exhibition curator under director Marta Gili and today holds the title of Curator and Researcher within the institution's direction. Her exhibitions there include François Kollar's "Un ouvrier du regard" (2016), an Eli Lotar retrospective developed with art historian Damarice Amao (2017), Ali Kazma (2017) and Susan Meiselas (2018), as well as, more recently, the group exhibition "The World Through AI" (2025). Viewing has described her curatorial priority as understanding artistic intention (rather than technical mastery alone) within its full historical context. For the masterclass, she introduces participants to the Jeu de Paume's current program, including the Stan Douglas "Parallax" retrospective.
Presenting both historical and heritage exhibitions, as well as exhibitions dedicated to contemporary artists (in photography and video), the Jeu de Paume seeks to promote and showcase little-known French and international photographic collections and to highlight photographers of the 20th and 21st centuries.
What can Pia bring to the masterclass participants
Viewing offers participants the reasoning of a national institution's curatorial programme from the inside: how the Jeu de Paume decides which photographers merit a retrospective, how a single artist's work is set against the wider history of the medium, and what separates an institutional exhibition from a gallery show or an auction lot. For collectors used to judging photography by instinct or by the market, her presence introduces a third register, art-historical significance, as institutions define it.