B.Arch, M.Arch, McGill University; M.Phil., Ph.D., Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University
Professor Jean-François Bédard specializes in the theory and practice of French architecture during the long eighteenth century. His teaching has focused on the social rituals and political values of court society in relation to architecture, decoration, and ornament. He has investigated the parallels between rhetoric and architectural design, the invention of the modern architect, and the interrelationship between architecture, ornament, and fashion in the “spectacular” politics of the Ancien Régime.
Professor Bédard completed his graduate studies in 2003 in the Department of Art History and Archeology of Columbia University. His dissertation, supervised by Professors Robin Middleton and Barry Bergdoll, centered on the domestic work of the French architect Gilles-Marie Oppenord (1672–1742), a preeminent figure of the French Regency. Bédard has developed aspects of this research as a J. Paul Getty Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Art and the Humanities, a Visiting Scholar at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, and a Visiting Scholar at the Institut national d’histoire de l’art in Paris. His book related to that project, Decorative Games: Ornament, Rhetoric, and Noble Culture in the Work of Gilles-Marie Oppenord (University of Delaware Press, 2011) traces the importance of noble rituals in the creative process of a court architect such as Oppenord. He has since expanded his research chronologically and has studied the architectural and decorative designs of Charles Percier (1764–1838) in the context of the visual culture of the Napoleonic court. He has also considered the political agenda underlying the work of one of the major scholars of the French Rococo, the architectural historian Fiske Kimball (1888–1955).
Prior to coming to Syracuse, Bédard was Assistant Curator in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, 1991–95.
Exhibitions
- Curator, Cities of Artificial Excavation: Works by Peter Eisenman, 1978–1988, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, 1994.
Grants and Awards
- Visiting Scholar, Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris, 2009
- Visiting Scholar, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, 2005
- Paul Getty Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Art and the Humanities, 2004–05
- Fellowship in the History of Art at Foreign Institutions, The Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1999–2001
- Jane and Morgan Whitney Fellow, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1998–99
Publications
BOOKS
-
Decorative Games: Ornament, Rhetoric, and Noble Culture in the Work of Gilles-Marie Oppenord (1672–1742). Newark, DE: The University of Delaware Press, 2011.
-
Editor, Cities of Artificial Excavations: The Work of Peter Eisenman, 1978–1988. New York: Rizzoli, 1994.
SELECTED CHAPTERS IN EDITED VOLUMES
- “France, 1400–1830.” In Sir Banister Fletcher’s History of Architecture. Edited by Murray Fraser, 145–86. London: Bloomsbury, 2019. https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/sir-banister-fletchers-global-history-of-architecture-9781472589989/
- “Ornament in Architecture.” In Eighteenth-Century Architecture. Edited by Caroline van Eck and Sigrid de Jong. Vol. 2 of The Companions to the History of Architecture, edited by Harry Malgrave, 96–116. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley & Sons, 2017.
- “Charles Percier, Court Architect: The Synthesis of Architecture and Décor.” In Charles Percier: Architecture and Design in the Age of Revolutions. Edited by Jean-Philippe Garric, 206–12. New York: Bard Graduate Center in the Decorative Arts, 2016.
SELECTED JOURNAL ARTICLES
- “La vitalité du décor: Fiske Kimball, du rococo au Colonial Revival.”Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 80, no. 4 (2017): 515–27. https://www.degruyter.com/view/supplement/s25691619_ZKG_Jahresregister_2017.pdf
- “Beds and Thrones: The Reform of French Aulic Space in Late Eighteenth-Century France.” Journal of Art Historiography 9 (December 2013). https://arthistoriography.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/bedard.pdf
- “Political Renewal and Architectural Revival during the French Regency: Oppenord’s Palais-Royal.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 68, no. 1 (March 2009): 30–51.
Administration and Service
- Chair of the Graduate Programs, Syracuse Architecture, 2013–16
