Talk | A curator’s introduction to Picasso: Designed by Paul Smith
Event detail
Join the Gallery's Senior Curator, International Art, Dr Sophie Matthiesson, on opening weekend for an introduction to Picasso: Designed by Paul Smith.
The coordinating curator for this exhibition, Sophie will lead a conversation with curators from Musée national Picasso–Paris, Virginie Perdrisot-Cassan and François Dareau.
Hear how Picasso: Designed by Paul Smith came together, why the exhibition is travelling internationally and how works were selected from the Musée national Picasso–Paris collection. The curators will also share insights into key artworks in the exhibition and Sir Paul Smith’s creative approach to presenting Picasso’s paintings, sculptures, ceramics, prints and drawings in a fresh way.
Doors open at 12:50pm, and the talk starts at 1pm.
The talk is free, but spaces are limited. Please book to avoid disappointment.
About the exhibition
Picasso: Designed by Paul Smith
Picasso like you’ve never seen him before. Encounter the Blue and Rose periods, Cubism, portraits and more in the first solo exhibition of Picasso’s work in Aotearoa New Zealand in more than 30 years.
Bringing together outstanding works from the Musée national Picasso–Paris in a special collaboration with legendary British fashion designer Sir Paul Smith, the exhibition unfolds across atmospheric rooms that draw on the colours, shapes, patterns and textures of Picasso's artworks. Smith’s experiments with light, colour, shape, feeling and his Signature Stripe reimagine how we experience the artworks.
This exhibition is organised by Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in collaboration with the Musée national Picasso–Paris.
About the contributors
Dr Sophie Matthiesson
Dr Sophie Matthiesson is Senior Curator, International Art at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. She has curated Manpower: Myths of Masculinity (2021) and Heavenly Beings: Icons of the Christian Orthodox World (2022 and MONA, Tasmania, 2023), both of which have associated publications. More recently she has co-curated Threads of Time: Travel, Trade and Textiles (2023–26), Gothic Returns: Fuseli to Fomison (2023–25) and The Robertson Gift: Paths through Modernity (2024).
She was previously curator of international art at the National Gallery of Victoria (2006–19) where she led the 2012 Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibition Monet’s Garden. Her doctoral research was on artists in prison in the French Revolution and received the Prix Marianne Roland Michel award from the Institut de France.
Virginie Perdrisot-Cassan
As chief curator at the Musée national Picasso-Paris, Virginie Perdrisot-Cassan is responsible for the collections of sculptures, ceramics and Giacometti furniture. She has curated several exhibitions devoted to Picasso’s work, including Picasso. The Figure (2026) at Louvre Abu Dhabi; Picasso-Giacometti (2016–2017) at the Musée national Picasso-Paris, subsequently presented at the Fire Station in Doha, Qatar (2017), and Museum Voorlinden in the Netherlands (2021–2022); and Picasso-Rodin (2021), co-curated and presented simultaneously at the Musée national Picasso-Paris and the Musée Rodin in Paris.
Earlier exhibitions include Picasso. 1932 (2017) at the Musée national Picasso-Paris, later presented at Tate Modern in London; Boisgeloup: Picasso’s Normandy Studio (2017) at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen; and Picasso. Sculptures (2016) at the Musée national Picasso-Paris, following Picasso Sculpture (2015) at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.
François Dareau
François Dareau is a research fellow and is responsible for the photographic collections at the Musée national Picasso-Paris. He joined the museum team in 2017 and has worked on a range of exhibitions exploring Picasso and modern and contemporary art.
In 2025, he worked on Degenerate Art: The Trial of Modern Art under Nazism and co-curated Picasso for Asia: A Conversation at M+ in Hong Kong, which brought together works by Picasso with those of contemporary Asian artists. In 2022–2023, he curated two exhibitions devoted to contemporary French artists, ORLAN and Pierre Moignard, and joined the curatorial team for Picasso: Designed by Paul Smith, the exhibition marking the 50th anniversary of Picasso’s death.
Earlier projects include the North American travelling exhibition Picasso. Figures (2021), presented at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville and the Musée national des Beaux-Arts du Québec, which examined the depiction of the human figure in relation to the artist’s sexism, and Diego Giacometti at the Musée Picasso (2018) at the Musée national Picasso-Paris. He also writes about emerging French artists.
