Premier Event Selects Jersey City as 2024 Location for Renowned Nocturnal Marathon, Free for all Attendees
March 1, 2024, 6 p.m. – 1 a.m.
Villa Albertine, Centre Pompidou, and Hudson County Community College (HCCC), with the support of the City of Jersey City, today announced the Night of Ideas, to be presented at HCCC on March 1, 2024, from 6 p.m. to 1 am. For the first time, this free and open-to-all event comes to Jersey City, one of the fastest growing and most diverse urban centers in the US, as well as the future home of the Centre Pompidou’s first American branch.
Interactive, celebratory, and content-rich, the Night of Ideas invites thought leaders and the public to engage together around major global issues through a festival of debate, performances, readings, and more.
The program, co-curated by Villa Albertine and Centre Pompidou, asks: How do we build and how do we live in cities today? Taking inspiration from Jersey City, the event will address urban growth and the future of cities with debates, installations, multimedia pop-ups, and workshops, prompting attendees to consider the impact of urban growth through lenses of inclusivity, sustainability, arts and culture, education, and food.
With over half of its participants either born, working, or residing in New Jersey, the program mirrors the vibrant community of the Garden State. Several collaborations with local organizations such as the Jersey City Free Public Library, Dense Magazine, Bike JC, and Sustainable JC further solidify the event's presence in the city.
Night of Ideas is Centre Pompidou’s first public event in Jersey City, with Anna Hiddleston and Charles Aubin as co-curators alongside Villa Albertine. This public/private collaboration is a prototype of more to come as Centre Pompidou will be an international institution embedded in the community.
Hudson County Community College is situated across the street from the Pathside building, where the future Centre Pompidou will be located. During the Night of Ideas, exclusive guided tours of the building will be available through an RSVP system.
Alongside art and video installations, program highlights include a keynote from former Jersey City poet laureate Rashad Wright, a workshop with designer and educator Prem Krishnamurthy on how art and design can help develop a more equitable, diverse, and joyous world; a round-table discussion investigating the in-between spaces created by infrastructure, moderated by Dense Magazine cofounder Petia Morozov and editor Andrew Harrison; performances by Jersey City-based dancer and choreographer Rimli Roy and her company, Surati; a visioning of the future of museums with the architect and leadership of Centre Pompidou Jersey City, with journalist and cultural strategist András Szántó; and two special tours: HCCC’s historic Foundation Art Collection led by HCCC Foundation Art Collection Coordinator Andrea Siegel, and the building site of Centre Pompidou.
Other participants include Senegalese academic, musician and writer Felwine Sarr, publisher, curator, and Villa Albertine resident Lydia Amarouche, visual artist Oliver Beer, fiction editor at The New Yorker Deborah Treisman, HCCC professors Jeremiah Teipen and Eric Adamson, WFMU radio general manager Ken Freedman, writers Yiyun Li and Akhil Sharma, architecture curator and writer Beatrice Galilee, author Helene Stapinski, sociologists Sybille Gollac and Céline Bessière, Pulitzer Prize winner and Express Newark director Salamishah Tillet, and writer Tiana Webb Evans.
This year, Night of Ideas returns across 20 US cities with the national theme “Outside the Lines,” centering urban life and development, and raising questions about the impact of climate change, new technologies, urban renewal, and social and cultural activism. Night of Ideas 2024 is presented nationwide by Villa Albertine and Albertine Foundation. It is coordinated worldwide by the Institut Français. For a full list of partners and sponsors, visit nightofideas.org.
When: March 1, 2024, 6 p.m. – 1 a.m.
Where: Hudson County Community College (Gabert Library)
71 Sip Avenue
Jersey City, NJ 07306
PATH Train stop: Journal Square
The PATH operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
16-minute ride from Newark-Penn Station
20-minute ride from the World Trade Center
26-minute ride from 14th Street & 6th Avenue
Paid parking (Path Garage, 16 Path Plaza) and street parking is available.