Gauguin's World Symposium

Henri Loyrette

Henri Loyrette is the curator of Gauguin’s World: Tōna Iho, Tōna Ao and French nineteenth century art history scholar. As a former Director of the Musée du Louvre, Loyrette is recognised for having expanded the display of the museum’s collection, and the museum itself, to Louvre-Lens in Northern France and Louvre Abu Dhabi.

Loyrette’s areas of specialisation are nineteenth century painting and architecture. He is a major scholar and acknowledged expert on Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet and other European artists of the period. His groundbreaking exhibitions include Degas à l’Opéra at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris and National Gallery of Art, Washington, in 2019, The Origins of Impressionism 1994, Degas Retrospective 1988 and Chicago, Birth of a Metropolis 1987. Loyrette has written major books on Degas, Gustave Eiffel, Viollet-le-Duc and Marcel Proust.

Loyrette has held important positions in French cultural organisations and has been widely honoured. He is chair of both the Giacometti Foundation and Cité internationale des Arts.

Miriama Bono

Miriama Bono is a Polynesian artist, curator and architect. She was the General Delegate of FIFO, the International Oceanian Documentary Film Festival, from 2010 to 2014, and became the association’s President in 2015. She was appointed Director of Te Fare Iamanaha – Musée de Tahiti et des Îles in 2017, a role she held until late 2023. During her tenure she took charge of renovating the museum, overseeing building work and coordinating international cooperation projects that led to the return to Polynesia in 2023 of 20 major pieces of Polynesian heritage from the collections of the British Museum, the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge and the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac.

Vaiana Giraud

Vaiana Giraud is deeply involved in Polynesian culture and events, first as communications manager and then as cultural events producer at the Maison de la Culture in Papeete (2003–21). She is passionate about the literary approach to Polynesia in Gauguin’s work, and holds a PhD in French literature (with the dissertation ‘Paul Gauguin: the role and place of writing in his work’), obtained in 2010 under the supervision of Mme Camelin, Professor Emerita of French Literature at the University of Poitiers, France. Editorial director of the cultural journal Hiro‘a from 2007 to 2020, Giraud is now head of the Traditional Crafts Department, part of the Government of French Polynesia, since 2021, where she coordinates and drives the animation and support of the sector. Since 2018, she has also been a member of the scientific and technical committee working on the creation of the planned Espace Gauguin in Papeari, Tahiti.

Nicholas Thomas

Nicholas Thomas first visited Polynesia in 1984 to undertake research in the Marquesas Islands. He has since travelled extensively across the Pacific, written on Indigenous histories, empire and art, and curated extensively. His books include Islanders: the Pacific in the age of empire (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2010), which was awarded the Wolfson History Prize, Possessions: Indigenous art / colonial culture / decolonization (Thames & Hudson, London, 1999/2021) and several collaborations with Pacific artists including Mark Adams and John Pule. Oceania, co-curated by Thomas with Peter Brunt for the Royal Academy of Arts in London and the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac in Paris in 2018–19, was acclaimed as a landmark exhibition. Since 2006, he has been Professor of Historical Anthropology, Director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.