Panel Discussion: Giacometti & Dalí

Dr. Jennifer Cohen, Director of Curatorial Affairs

Jennifer earned her doctorate in Art History from the University of Chicago, specializing in modern art and the historical avant-garde, and she also holds degrees in Comparative Literature and Apparel Design from Cornell University. Until she joined The Dalí in September 2023, she was working as the Art Institute of Chicago’s inaugural curator of provenance and research, exploring ownership histories with each of the Museum’s eleven curatorial departments. Her exhibitions and publications have addressed Surrealism and its legacies, from artist-designed shop windows in World War II-era New York to Ray Johnson’s use of buttons as material and motif in the 1960s. Favorite projects include the exhibitions Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926–1938 (2014); Alfred Stieglitz and the 19th Century (2015-16); Ray Johnson c/o and the satellite presentation c/o Tender Buttons (2021-22); and Salvador Dalí: The Image Disappears (2023), all at the Art Institute; and the works on paper show Robert Motherwell and Multiplicity (2023) at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT. Her research has been supported by the Mellon-Council of European Studies, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Dedalus Foundation. Her writing has been published in the Brooklyn Rail, the Journal of Surrealism and the Americas, and various exhibition catalogs, including the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí’s online publication Transgressing Venus (2022).

Dr. William Jeffett, Senior Curator

Dr. William Jeffett received his Doctorate from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. He also holds degrees from Oxford University, Yale University and University of Texas. Before joining The Dalí Museum, Dr. Jeffett was Curator at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at University of East Anglia (UK). At The Dalí, he is responsible for the direction, curation, organization and co-ordination of exhibition programs; writing and editing of exhibition catalogs and other interpretative material, including the interpretation of works by Dalí; and research on the permanent collection. 

Dr. Jeffett contributes to the expansion of the Museum’s collection through seeking and recommending acquisitions. He is an active researcher and writer for The Dalí and other museums, research institutes and universities. He has published numerous exhibition catalogs and articles devoted to Salvador Dalí, other related artists and contemporary art. Dr. Jeffett has curated many shows for the Museum and other influential institutions, including the Fundacio Joan Miro (Barcelona), Fundacio “La Caixa” (Madrid) and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (Madrid). He curated Dalí and Duchamp with Dawn Ades for The Dalí and Royal Academy (London).

Émilie Bouvard

Émilie Bouvard is an art historian and curator of French Art Heritage and Culture (Conservateur du Patrimoine). In 2007, she supported a thesis at the University of Paris entitled “Violence de l’art des femmes, 1958-1978. Surréalisme, psychanalyse et féminisme”, focusing on Louise Bourgeois. She was curator at the Musée national Picasso-Paris from 2013 to 2019 where she was, among others, the (co-)curator of the exhibitions “Guernica” and “Picasso. Chefs d’oeuvre !” (2018) and the scientific coordinator of “Picasso-Méditerranée”. She is currently the scientific and collections director of the Giacometti Foundation in Paris for which she curated the exhibition “Alberto Giacometti. Le réel merveilleux” (Grimaldi Forum, Monaco, 2021) or “What meets the eye. Alberto Giacometti and phenomenology” (National Gallery, Copenhagen, 2024). At the Institut Giacometti, she inaugurated an exhibition on the artist Barbara Chase-Riboud for the Institut Giacometti (autumn 2021), “Alberto Giacometti / Salvador Dalí. Garden of Dreams” (winter 2022) or “Beauvoir, Sartre, Giacmetti. Vertigiousness of the Absolute” (summer 2025).

She is in charge of following the future Fondation Giacometti museum architectural, artistic and scientific programme.