David Hartt: Peripheries

Multidisciplinary artist David Hartt (Canadian, born 1967) transforms John Vanderlyn's immersive historical painting, Panoramic View of the Palace and Gardens of Versailles (1818–19), into a dynamic contemporary installation, offering viewers the opportunity to explore questions of place and perspective. Vanderlyn’s highly detailed rendering of Versailles—among the largest surviving panoramas in the United States—is activated by Hartt’s architectural intervention, bringing past and present into conversation.

For this site-specific commission—consisting of two Direct View LED screens and echoing imagery from the panorama itself—Hartt draws on direct documentation of Versailles, the cinematic language of French New Wave Cinema, and photographs of the palace grounds by Eugene Atget to reshape the experience of The Met’s circular gallery space housing the work. Filmed at locations from Versailles to the Boulevard Périphérique and throughout the center of Paris, Peripheries explores the constant reinvention of the French capital. Hartt’s installation reconfigures movement and angles of vision, augmented through an original score by composer and musician Jeff Parker. Visitors are visually lured away from established centers within the city toward the margins—or the “peripheries”—where alternative perspectives and histories are often relegated. By engaging directly with Vanderlyn's panorama, Hartt has created a space to reconsider not only the historical painting itself but also examine ideas of representation and cultural memory within a living environment.