Pontus Hulten, audacious museum director and curator, dies at 82

Pontus Hulten, the influential Swedish museum director and curator, died on October 26 at age 82. As director of the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, he commissioned Niki de Saint-Phalle's monumental sculpture 'Hon' (1966), a reclining Nana that visitors entered through her legs. He later served as the first director of the Musée National d'Art Moderne at the Centre Pompidou from 1973 to 1981, where he organized landmark thematic exhibitions: Paris-New-York, Paris-Berlin, and Paris-Moscou. Hulten co-signed the Manifeste Jaune with Victor Vasarely for the 1955 exhibition Le Mouvement at Galerie Denise René. In 1968, he curated 'The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age' at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, tracing the theme back to Leonardo da Vinci. He also supported emerging artists, giving Bertrand Lavier his first exhibition. Hulten was a committed European who extended his vision of Europe to the Urals. His death coincided with the FIAC art fair in Paris.