June 18th: Donatien Grau—De Civitate Angelorum

Presented by 192 Books and Paula Cooper Gallery, Donatien Grau presents De Civitate Angelorum (Yvon Lambert, 2024)

This event will take place live at 192 Books at 192 10th Avenue, between 21st and 22nd avenue, on Tuesday, June 18th at 7:00 PM ET. Seating is on a first come, first served basis. There will be a introduction in English and reading in Latin. The discussion will be streamed directly on this page. A recording will be archived.

Donatien Grau—De Civitate Angelorum (Yvon Lambert Editions, Paris, 2023)

De Civitate Angelorum is based on a simple principle: Los Angeles was built as the extreme point of the United States of America, before Asia, and therefore was constructed culturally as the extreme point of the West. That's why J. Paul Getty himself built the Getty Villa here, taking over the Villa dei Papiri in what he saw as the American equivalent of Campania, the home of the Roman elite, in Malibu. In keeping with this history, Donatien Grau has written a book about Los Angeles entirely in Latin. The text appears in Latin only. The title De Civitate Angelorum (literally "On the City of Angels", or "On Los Angeles") echoes Saint Augustine's De Civitate Dei ("The City of God").This is a reference to 5th-century Latin authors, who positioned themselves after the great era of Roman history and in front of the great ancient library. The text is full of "centos," taking up the history that preceded it. It is thus like a counterpart to the "post-history" that Los Angeles has come to embody.

Photo by Paulo Roversi

Donatien Grau is an editor, scholar, writer, museum executive and fellow-traveller to artists. The author of numerous studies on the arts and culture of the Roman Empire, he has equally devoted significant parts of his research to modern literary and art history as well as to contemporary creativity. He currently serves as chair of the Association Pierre Guyotat and is the Editor-in-Chief and artistic director of the newly-founded magazine Alphabet. He is also the head of contemporary programs at the Musée du Louvre in Paris and was previously the head of contemporary programs at Musée d'Orsay, Paris; before that, the advisor to Azzedine Alaïa for the couturier's not-for-profit exhibition space, the Galerie (2014–17). He curated the inaugural exhibition of the reopening of the Getty Villa, Malibu, Plato in L. A. (2018) and is an Editor-at-Large of The Brooklyn Rail as well as the author of many publications, such as Living Museums (2020) and Under Discussion: The Encyclopedic Museum (2021).