Things are changing at Centre SKOL

The Board and team of Centre des arts actuels SKOL are delighted to welcome Florent To Lay as General and Artistic Director. His international experience and knowledge of the contemporary art field will be essential assets in the pursuit of the center’s mandate and vision.

A cosmopolitan, Florent speaks eight languages. He settled in Montreal less than a year ago and has already built up a solid network in Quebec. As General and Artistic Director, he aims to build on the remarkable work of Stéphanie Chabot over the past twelve years in fields as varied as inclusion, cultural mediation, platforms for exchange and reflection, universal accessibility and community links.

His aim is to offer forward-looking, eclectic and intercultural programming where everyone can feel welcome at all stages of life, whether alone, in a group or as a family. He is particularly keen to emphasize interdisciplinarity, a key value of SKOL since its inception. In keeping with the Master Plan, he hopes that the exhibitions will become a means of creating links beyond the visual arts.

Before moving into the world of culture and curating, Florent worked on three continents with communities, governments and corporations. He has also worked in the start-up industry, in management consulting and, most recently, at UNESCO.

Florent To Lay holds a double Master’s degree from Columbia University and Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne in Modern & Contemporary Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies / Histoire de l’art. His dissertation explored Édouard Glissant’s notion of creolization in the contemporary American art of the 1990s through the actions of the New York alternative center Exit Art. An independent curator for the past five years, he has organized several solo exhibitions, including Virus Becoming by Taiwanese-American artist Shu Lea Cheang (this year’s recipient of the LG Guggenheim 2024 Prize) at the Musée des Arts Asiatiques de Nice in 2021. More recently, he designed the traveling exhibition Sander Sardinia 1927, based on August Sander’s photographic project in Sardinia. Since 2023, this exhibition has toured several European cities before arriving in Canada. After the Musée de Charlevoix, the exhibition will be on view from September 18 at the Italian Cultural Institute in Montreal.

Welcome, Florent!

The Board of Directors of Centre des arts actuels SKOL

Photo credits: Clara Lacasse
For the press release, please check the French page