Confessions of an Art Evangelist:
A Multimedia Memoir
A live performance weaving art, memory, and revelation
What is Confessions?
Blending live narrative, rare archival images, and immersive video, Deborah Zafman invites you into her lifelong devotion to art as a force of transformation. This intimate multimedia memoir charts a journey from art historian to gallerist to Art Evangelist, revealing how art awakens, liberates, and heals.
When & Where
• Date & Time: Wednesday, January 14th, 2025, 7:30PM EST (Doors open 7:00pm)
• Location: Montclair State University, John J. Cali School of Music, Leshowitz Hall
• Format: Live performance
In the News
Press Release
On Wednesday, January 14th, 2025 at 7:30PM, the public premiere of "Confessions of an Art Evangelist: A Multimedia Memoir" will be staged at Montclair State University’s John J. Cali School of Music, Leshowitz Hall. Created and performed by Deborah Zafman, Ph.D. — art historian, writer, appraiser, former gallerist, and thought leader — this one-woman show offers an unforgettable evening of storytelling and art. Seating is limited to 180 tickets only. Doors open at 7:00 PM.
More Information:
Deborah Zafman’s journey through the art world spans decades and multiple roles, each of which surfaces in Confessions of an Art Evangelist. As a gallerist in Paris, she championed artists at the cutting edge of contemporary practice, shaping exhibitions that brought new voices into the spotlight. As an art historian and appraiser, she has navigated the highest levels of the international art market, handling masterworks by iconic names while also grappling with the complexities of value, legacy, and cultural meaning.
But the show also unveils the more intimate, vulnerable layers of her life in art. Zafman shares her experiences as a collector, revealing what it means to live with art as a daily companion, not just as an object of scholarship or commerce. She recounts her time as a model for artists, exploring the strange alchemy of being both subject and witness, body and muse.
These confessions are woven together with rare archival photographs from her gallerist years and rich audio-visual content — including video projections and carefully chosen soundtracks. The result collapses the boundary between public and private, the professional and the personal.
The performance is at once intellectual and sensual, blending cultural history with raw confession. It invites the audience into the tension between art as transcendence and art as flesh, between its capacity to lift us toward the divine and its power to awaken desire.
Zafman’s work as The Art Evangelist reflects a lifelong conviction: that art is not an accessory to life but a force that penetrates, transforms, and liberates. Confessions of an Art Evangelist crystallizes that vision into an evening that is as provocative as it is illuminating — a performance equally at home on a university stage, a theater, or within the walls of a museum.