The Street ART(s) Chair, inaugurated in 2025, is dedicated to the study of the practices, history, and contemporary issues of Street Art. It benefits from the patronage of the Renault Fund for Art and Culture, established in 2024 to promote and support art, culture, and heritage. This initiative launches a four-year partnership that will enable ENS-PSL and its Foundation to develop an unprecedented scientific and cultural program.
The Chair’s central objective is to explore the diversity of Street Art expressions—graffiti, murals, installations, street arts, and urban music—as well as its interactions with other artistic disciplines, and its role in the transformation of urban spaces. By bringing together approaches from art history, film studies, theater, music, and the social sciences, the Chair will analyze the place of Street Art in contemporary society and its aesthetic, social, and political stakes.
Led by the ARTS Department of ENS-PSL, the Chair will combine research, teaching, and public outreach through the recruitment of early-career researchers, the organization of events, the development of courses, and engagement with a broad audience. It will draw in particular on the SACRe laboratory (Sciences, Arts, Creation, Research), a flagship program of ENS-PSL and its partner schools dedicated to the intersections between research and artistic creation.
The Chair is directed by Charlotte Guichard, Professor of Early Modern Art History, and Antoine de Baecque, Professor of Film Studies and Director of the ARTS Department at ENS-PSL.
