In conversation with artist Lisa Oppenheim

Huis Marseille presents Spolia, the first institutional solo exhibition of American artist Lisa Oppenheim in the Netherlands. In collaboration with the Goethe-Institut, Huis Marseille is hosting an event with an introduction by art historian and provenance researcher Liza Lebedeva, followed by conversation between Pieter van Os and artist Lisa Oppenheim on her artistic practice.

At a time when much attention is being paid to Nazi-looted art, Oppenheim is focussing both on art looted from Dutch collections and on Dutch art in collections looted elsewhere. She focusses primarily on artworks and objects that have most likely disappeared or been destroyed. Through a multi-layered approach, Oppenheim shows how the lost artworks and objects are still present in the world around us.

Lisa Oppenheim (US, 1975) currently lives and works in New York. She received a BA from Brown University (1998) and an MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School for the Arts at Bard College (2001). She also attended the Whitney Independent Study Programme in New York and the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. She has had solo exhibitions at the MCA in Denver (2018), the moCa Cleveland (2017), the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne in Reims (2015) and the Kunstverein in Hamburg (2014).

Liza Lebedeva (RUS, 1994) is an art historian and provenance researcher. She obtained her master’s degree in art history at the University of Amsterdam and specialised in modern and contemporary art. After graduating, she worked as a provenance researcher at the National Agency for Cultural Heritage, where she researched the NK collection. She currently works at Museum Bredius, where she conducts provenance research on art objects acquired between 1933 and 1945.

Pieter van Os (NL, 1971) is a writer and journalist. He produced Hier hing een schilderij (Here hung a painting), an eight-part podcast for NRC about the return of a painting: a Kandinsky from the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. As a journalist, he writes mainly for the daily newspaper NRC and the weekly De Groene Amsterdammer.