Seven years ago now, contemporary art professionals felt the need to meet regularly in order to exchange their points of view and compare their experiences. Less a reaction to budgetary cutbacks or the ups and downs of the art market, it was above all the lack of any meeting ground around the work being produced by living artists that was the key issue behind this initiative. The idea of bringing together the full range of the professions involved in contemporary art stemmed from this awareness.
In October 1996, the first inter-professional contemporary-art congress was held in Tours, focusing on a broadly shared and highly topical question : “Art, a public affair.” Encouraged by successfully bringing together more than a thousand people, a second congress was organised in November 1998, seeking to investigate another fundamental theme : “Art, a necessary education.” The third congress, organised in Nantes in November 2001, attracted some 1500 actors from the contemporary-art world, around the theme : “Art, artists and professions.” The fourth congress intends to broaden the scope of the debate to the European level – an unavoidable horizon today if new artistic, institutional, market-oriented or political perspectives of creation are to be established. This fourth congress is to be held in Metz, on 27-28 November 2003, and will focus on the theme : “ The European Challenge in Contemporary Art. Exchange and Co-operation.”