Conversation
Lynn Gumpert Presents “Pow! Right in the Eye!” with Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn and Carlo McCormick

The memoir of a provocative Parisian art dealer at the heart of the twentieth-century art world is available in English for the first time. In celebration of Berthe Weill’s Pow! Right in the Eye! Thirty Years behind the Scenes of Modern French Painting (University of Chicago Press, June 2022), Lynn Gumpert (Director, Grey Art Gallery) joins Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn (curator, art advisor, gallerist, and activist) and Carlo McCormick (curator and critic) for a special in-person conversation at the Rizzoli Bookstore in NYC.

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Berthe Weill, a formidable Parisian dealer, was born into a Jewish family of very modest means. One of the first female gallerists in the business, she first opened the Galerie B. Weill in the heart of Paris’s art gallery district in 1901, holding innumerable exhibitions over nearly forty years. Written out of art history for decades, Weill has only recently regained the recognition she deserves.

Under five feet tall and bespectacled, Weill was beloved by the artists she supported, and she rejected the exploitative business practices common among art dealers. Despite being a self-proclaimed “terrible businesswoman,” Weill kept her gallery open for four decades, defying the rising tide of antisemitism before Germany’s occupation of France. By the time of her death in 1951, Weill had promoted more than three hundred artists—including Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Diego Rivera, and Suzanne Valadon—many of whom were women and nearly all young and unknown when she first exhibited them.

Pow! Right in the Eye! makes Weill’s provocative 1933 memoir finally available to English readers, offering rare insights into the Parisian avant-garde and a lively inside account of the development of the modern art market.

Health and Safety:
Guests over the age of five must wear masks and show proof of vaccination (either a vaccine card or an Excelsior Pass).