Night of Ideas Jersey City: Festival of debates, workshops, and performances on the theme of urban life, art, and growth kicks off March 1
February 2, 2024
Villa Albertine’s free late-night event comes to Jersey City for the first time this year, co-curated with the Centre Pompidou and hosted by Hudson County Community College. An annual worldwide happening, Night of Ideas will take place in 20 US cities over the course of a week.
March 1, 2024, 6pm–1am
New York and Paris, January 30, 2024 — Villa Albertine, Centre Pompidou, and Hudson County Community College (HCCC), with the support of the City of Jersey City, today announced the Night of Ideas, to be presented at HCCC on March 1, 2024 from 6pm to 1am. For the first time, this free and open-to-all event comes to Jersey City, one of the fastest growing and most diverse urban centers in the US, as well as the future home of the Centre Pompidou’s first American branch. Interactive, celebratory, and content-rich, the Night of Ideas invites thought leaders and the public to engage together around major global issues through a festival of debate, performances, readings, and more.
The program, co-curated by Villa Albertine and Centre Pompidou, asks: how do we build and how do we live in cities today? Taking inspiration from Jersey City, the event will address urban growth and the future of cities with debates, installations, multimedia pop-ups, and workshops, prompting attendees to consider the impact of urban growth through lenses of inclusivity, sustainability, arts and culture, education, and food.
Alongside art and video installations, program highlights include a keynote from former Jersey City poet laureate Rashad Wright, a workshop with designer and educator Prem Krishnamurthy on how art and design can help develop a more equitable, diverse, and joyous world; a round-table discussion investigating the in-between spaces created by infrastructure, moderated by Dense Magazine cofounder Petia Morozov and editor Andrew Harrison; performances by Jersey City-based dancer and choreographer Rimli Roy and her company, Surati; a visioning of the future of museums with the architect and leadership of Centre Pompidou Jersey City, with journalist and cultural strategist András Szántó; and two special tours: HCCC’s historic Foundation Art Collection led by HCCC Foundation Art Collection Coordinator Andrea Siegel, and the building site of Centre Pompidou.
Other participants include Senegalese academic, musician and writer Felwine Sarr, publisher, curator, and Villa Albertine resident Lydia Amarouche, visual artist Oliver Beer, fiction editor at The New Yorker Deborah Treisman, HCCC professors Jeremiah Teipen and Eric Adamson, WFMU radio general manager Ken Freedman, writers Yiyun Li and Akhil Sharma, architecture curator and writer Beatrice Galilee, author Helene Stapinski, sociologists Sybille Gollac and Céline Bessière, Pulitzer Prize winner and Express Newark director Salamishah Tillet, and writer Tiana Webb Evans.
With over half of its participants either born, working, or residing in New Jersey, the program mirrors the vibrant community of the Garden State. Several collaborations with local organizations such as the Jersey City Free Public Library, Dense Magazine, Bike JC, and Sustainable JC further solidify the event's presence in the city.
Night of Ideas is Centre Pompidou’s first public event in Jersey City, with Anna Hiddleston and Charles Aubin as co-curators alongside Villa Albertine. This public/private collaboration is a prototype of more to come as Centre Pompidou will be an international institution embedded in the community.
Hudson County Community College is situated across the street from the Pathside building, where the future Centre Pompidou will be located. During the Night of Ideas, exclusive guided tours of the building will be available through an RSVP system.
This year, Night of Ideas returns across 20 US cities with the national theme “Outside the Lines,” centering urban life and development, and raising questions about the impact of climate change, new technologies, urban renewal, and social and cultural activism.
Night of Ideas 2024 is presented by Villa Albertine and Albertine Foundation thanks to the leadership support of the Judy & Peter Blum Kovler Foundation, and with the support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and The Carnegie Corporation of New York. It is coordinated worldwide by the Institut Français.
When: March 1, 2024, 6pm-1am
Where: Hudson County Community College (Gabert Library)
71 Sip Avenue
Jersey City, NJ 07306
PATH Train stop: Journal Square
The PATH operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
16-minute ride from Newark-Penn Station
20-minute ride from the World Trade Center
26-minute ride from 14th Street & 6th Avenue
Paid parking (Path Garage, 16 Path Plaza) and street parking is available.
PRESS CONTACTS:
Villa Albertine: mia.fierberg@villa-albertine.org
Hudson County Community College: jchristopherFREEHUDSONCOUNTYCOMMUNITYCOLLEGE
Jersey City: Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione KScalcione@jcnj.org
About Centre Pompidou
Centre Pompidou will open a new satellite in Jersey City in 2027. This project builds on more than a decade of expertise opening new museums both in France and abroad. After the inauguration of a first branch in the French city of Metz in 2010, the institution has opened outposts in Málaga, Spain (2015), Brussels, Belgium (2018), and Shanghai, China (2019). The American partnership will be established in the Pathside building, a 58,000 square-feet industrial edifice inaugurated in 1912 and renovated by OMA/Jason Long. The future Centre Pompidou x New Jersey will be a world-class multidisciplinary institution, proudly anchored in the cultural fabric of Jersey City and New Jersey, with education as its backbone. Its building will offer exhibition galleries, a performance studio, workshop and seminar rooms, as well as a forum providing spaces to gather informally.
About Villa Albertine
Villa Albertine is a cultural institution that supports exchanges in arts and ideas between the United States, France, and beyond. With outposts in 10 US cities—Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, and Washington, DC—Villa Albertine presents innovative programming nationwide including 50+ customized residencies for international artists, thinkers, and cultural leaders across disciplines each year; a series of cross-cultural dialogues and events; a magazine and podcast; and grants, resources, and incubator programs for professionals in the cultural sphere.
Villa Albertine is an institution of the Embassy of France in the United States and the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, developed in partnership with Albertine Foundation, with support from the French Ministry of Culture and the Institut Français. Villa Albertine is particularly thankful for the leadership support of Societe Generale, Ford Foundation, Bettencourt-Schueller Foundation, Recanati-Kaplan Foundation, Ardian, AXA, the Florence Gould Endowment for Literary Exchange, the Judy and Peter Blum Kovler Foundation, Engie Foundation, the Louis Roederer Foundation, Van Cleef and Arpels, the Fonds de dotation Banque Transatlantique, and institutional and individual partners.
Follow Villa Albertine on Instagram, Facebook, X, and LinkedIn.
About the City of Jersey City
Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop has been a staunch advocate for promoting arts and education. Recent milestones solidifying Jersey City as a sought-after destination for arts and culture include major projects in the pipeline, such as Centre Pompidou x Jersey City and the Loew’s Theatre restoration. Additionally, since the Fulop Administration’s implementation of the first-ever Arts and Culture Trust Fund in 2021, $3 million has been allocated in less than two years to support local artists and arts organizations. Applications for the third round of Jersey City’s Arts and Culture Trust Fund grants open this week.
About the Institut français
The Institut français is responsible for France’s international cultural program. Supervised by both the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs and by the Ministry of Culture, it promotes French culture abroad through cultural exchange initiatives. Operating in a space where the arts, intellectual exchange, cultural and social innovation, and linguistic partnerships interact and intersect, it is also responsible for promoting the French language and the sharing of works, artists, and ideas all over the world. The Institut français is one of Villa Albertine's main French partners.