2/ MusΘe national
d'art moderne-Centre de crΘation industrielle
The MusΘe national d'art moderne-Centre de crΘation industrielle (National Museum of Modern Art-Center for Industrial Design, Mnam-Cci) has one of the world's most important public collections of twentieth-century art, architecture, and design. Its holdings, which are continuously expanded through donations, bequests, dations, and purchases, are presented on the third and fourth floors of the Centre Georges Pompidou. Its exhibitions have become landmark events for a public that is eager to encounter all the art forms of its times and follow their development.
When the Centre Georges Pompidou re-opens on 31st December 1999, the museum will have two complete, fully-renovated floors (levels 3 and 4) in which to display its collections.
A Brief History
The MusΘe national d'art moderne
The beginnings of a modern art museum can be traced back to 1818 and the founding of the MusΘe Luxembourg, devoted exclusively to living artists of the French school. In 1922, a second museum, the Jeu de Paume, was created for the works of foreign artists.
At the time of the International Exposition of 1937, the MusΘe d'art moderne moved into the Palais de Tokyo. Ten years later, under the direction of Jean Cassou, it became the MusΘe national d'art moderne, bringing together all the major international artists and movements of the previous fifty years. In 1976, the museum was transferred to the Centre Georges Pompidou.
The Centre de crΘation industrielle
Founded in 1969 as part of the Union centrale des arts dΘcoratifs and integrated four years later into the nascent Centre Georges Pompidou, the Centre de crΘation industrielle is devoted to the history and development of the everyday environment and industrial creation in the twentieth century, including architecture, interior design, urbanism, design, and visual communication.
The MusΘe national d'art moderne-Centre de crΘation industrielle
The MusΘe national d'art moderne and the Centre de crΘation industrielle were merged by the decree of 24 December 1992, thus permitting the development of a concerted acquisitions policy in the areas of architecture and design.
The museum’s objectives have been confirmed and better defined with a view to the re-opening of the Centre on 31st December 1999
The decision taken on 17th April 1998 restructured this department in order to enable it, on the one hand, to fulfil its mission regarding the collection more fully and more effectively and, on the other hand, to give greater emphasis to the priority of its action in support of contemporary creativity.
The museum has been restructured along three main lines:
A core sector
One of the Assistant Directors is responsible for activities relating to the collection e.g. co-ordination of the various scientific sectors, administrative and financial management, museum layout and presentation, display and circulation of works.
The other Assistant Director has a specific brief to monitor and enhance contemporary creativity. The priority given to this will be confirmed again in the Centre’s programme after it re-opens. He is also responsible for the co-ordination and monitoring of special events and initiatives to increase public awareness of culture organised under the leadership of the museum’s scientific team.
In order to carry out their respective tasks, the two Assistant Directors make use of all the art preservation services. In particular, they work with the Direction de la Production (production unit).
Preserving the Cultural Heritage: The Permanent Collections
The MusΘe national d'art moderne-Centre de crΘation industrielle has one of the world's most important collections relating to twentieth-century creation. Nearly 4,200 artists are represented, with some 36,000 works for the visual arts (paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, and films), about 800 for architecture (drawings, models, photographs, and films), and 1,000 for design (drawings, models, manufactured objects and designer originals, furniture, and graphic design)
Acquisitions Policy
Acquisitions result from purchases, gifts, donations, bequests, or dations.
Purchases
A special budget for acquisitions, introduced in 1974, allowed the museum's staff to establish a genuine purchasing policy and fill in the gaps in the national collections, notably in areas of surrealism, abstraction, and international art. This budget rose steadily from 8 million francs in 1977 to 18 million in 1982, 23.8 million in 1984, with a peak of close to 27 million. It is presently around 20 million francs.
Gifts and Donations
While the museum's collection owes a great deal to its purchasing policy, it has also been enhanced by other means, notably through gifts and donations that reflect a seemingly unprecedented generosity. These include, for example, a monumental group of Matisse cutouts donated by his heirs in 1982; the five Chagall paintings given in 1983 by the artist's daughter, Ida Chagall; works by the Russian artists Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Gontcharova donated by the Soviet government to the French government in 1988 and integrated into the museum collections; and the exceptional donations of Louise and Michel Leiris in 1985 and Daniel Cordier in 1989.
Dations
In recent years the museum's collection has been considerably expanded through increasing use of the dation, through which artists' heirs are able to settle inheritance taxes by donating works to the State. A notable example is the Marie-Elena Veira da Silva dation of 1993, which includes twenty paintings and drawings, a series of twenty studies on paper for the stained-glass windows of the Saint-Jacques church in Reims, and five paintings by the artist's late husband, Arpad Szenes.
Exhibiting the Collection
Since the creation of the Centre Georges Pompidou, about 8,000 m2 of exhibition space has been available for the permanent collections, which, at the time of the closing of the Centre for renovations last September occupied the whole of the fourth floor and part of the third floor.
Level 4 (4e Θtage) was previously devoted to the major artistic movements from Fauvism (1905) to the 1960s, grouped around their central figures.
The first part of the visit, from the Fauves to Fernand LΘger, consisted of essential works selected for their historic value and their importance in the collection: an exceptional ensemble of paintings and gouache paper cut-outs by Henri Matisse and a rigorous selection of Cubism opening onto the diverse paths explored by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Fernand LΘger, of whom the Museum possesses one of the finest collections. The following rooms presented the major artists from after the 1914-18 war up until the 1960s: abstract styles (from Wassily Kandinsky to Jackson Pollock and Minimal art), Surrealist paths, the figurative movements of the 1950s-60s, Pop Art and New Realism. The visit ended with artists representative of the 1960s' change of direction.
Several additional areas completed this presentation of the modern art collection:
- The Galerie du MusΘe (Museum Gallery) exhibited recent acquisitions and presented theme dossiers combining various aspects of the collections, such as the "La Gourmandise" (Gourmandise) exhibitions and the "Six pΘchΘs capitaux" (Six Deadly Sins) series starting with "La Paresse" (Sloth) and "La ColΦre" (Wrath).
- The Galerie d'Art Graphique (Graphic Arts Gallery) and the Galerie de la Tour (photography collection) completed the "Made in France 1947-1997" exhibition.
Contemporary art from the 1960s to the present day
Over the last few years the contemporary art collection has proved itself to be developing dynamically. It includes New Realist works with an emphasis on sets of monographs: Yves Klein, Martial Raysse, Daniel Spoerri.
Arte Povera is presented through the founding works of the movement. Several installations have been exhibited on a permanent basis, some of the most outstanding being those by Edward Kienholz, George Segal, Eva Aeppli, Dan Graham and Ilya Kabakov, plus works by two major figures of contemporary British sculpture, Tony Cragg and Richard Deacon, as well as by the German Gerhard Richter.
In addition, two rooms devoted to design and contemporary architecture were opened on level 3 (3e Θtage) of the Museum to display works in rotation.
When the Centre re-opens these two sections will have much more spacious permanent display areas.
The other important areas on level 3 (3e Θtage) :
- The Espace VidΘo (Video Room), inaugurated in 1992 with the "Manifeste" (Manifesto) exhibition, has made it possible to view the collection of videos and computer-generated images (650 works) on request.
- The CinΘma du MusΘe (Museum Cinema): the museum's cinema on level 3 (3e Θtage) has been presenting a continuous programme of films by artists or about art.
Disseminating artistic creation: the exhibitions :
The MusΘe national d'art moderne-Centre de crΘation industrielle has always striven to balance out permanent display of its collections with the programming of temporary exhibitions.
The very widest of publics has here discovered the means to a better understanding of our epoch and an improved perception of how artistic creation has evolved.
The exhibitions have followed a schedule based around various perspectives:
Present creators whose works form a fundamental milestone in 20th-century history
Since its creation the Centre Georges Pompidou seasons have been punctuated by retrospectives devoted to great creators of the 20th century: RenΘ Magritte (1979), Georges Braque (1982), Balthus (1983), Marc Chagall (1984), Pierre Bonnard (1984), AndrΘ Breton (1991), Max Ernst (1992), Henri Matisse (1993), Joseph Beuys (1994), Kurt Schwitters (1994), Constantin Brancusi (1995), Francis Bacon (1996), Fernand LΘger (1997).
Present large multidiscipline frescoes
"Paris-Berlin" (1978), "Paris-Moscou" (Paris-Moscow) (1979), "Paris-Paris" (1981), "Vienne" (Vienna) (1986), "Japon des avant-gardes 1910-1970" (Avant-Garde Japan, 1910-1970) (1986), "Manifeste" (Manifesto) (1992), "La Ville" (The City) (1994).
Respond to the major questions posed by the period and explore what has sustained creation during the century
This set of themes, brought into play at the approach of the end of the century, purports to list the major issues which have agitated art during this century and to develop the questions presently being posed as to the links between art and industry, art and sexuality, art and history and art and spirituality, within the diversity of disciplines represented in the Centre:
"FΘminin-masculin, le sexe de l'art" (Feminine-Masculine, the Sex of Art) (1995), "Face α l'histoire" (Facing History) (1996), "Les ingΘnieurs du siΦcle" (The Engineers of the Century) (1997).
Present the creators of today
Alongside the retrospectives devoted to 20th-century masters, the Centre Georges Pompidou has been giving living artists the opportunity to create exceptional events. Amongst these are Franτois Morellet (1986), Tadao Ando (1993), Marisa Merz (1994), Ettore Sottsass (1994), Robert Morris (1995), Ilya Kabakov (1995), Gaetano Pesce (1996), Christian de Portzamparc (1996), Luciano Fabro (1996) and Jean Tinguely (1996).
Promoting the New Media
The New Media department (video, new technologies) was created in 1986 to address the relations that have been developing since the 1960s between the "traditional" visual arts and the new techniques of creation. It is responsible for organizing exhibitions, building permanent collections, and producing publications.
The Revue virtuelle (Virtual Magazine), created in 1992, has played an important role in giving the public access to the latest developments in virtual reality, computer-generated images, and multimedia viewed from scientific, aesthetic, museographic, or pedagogical standpoints. Through exhibitions, lectures, and printed guides, it has presented the works of innovative authors, artists, theorists, or institutions involved with the new technologies. Its recent CD-ROM, Actualizing the Virtual, provides an overview of these activities since 1991.
Documenting the Art of the Twentieth Century
The Mnam-Cci Documentation Center covers the arts of the twentieth century, from painting, sculpture, and graphics to architecture, design, urbanism, photography, and cinema. Its resources--more than a million documents--include monographs, catalogues, periodicals, manuscripts, archives, artist files, black-and-white photographs, and slides.
Two computerized catalogues provide access to the holdings:
- the general catalogue for monographs, periodicals, exhibition and sales catalogues, slides, and, in the near future, artist files, archives, and photographs,
- the former data base of the Centre de crΘation industrielle for articles on architecture and design. Also available in the documentation center are CD-ROMs, picture resources, printed bibliographies, and photocopies and microfilm reproductions. These catalogues can now be consulted on this Web site.
The Documentation Center, located on the second floor (access : in front of the South Gallery) open Monday, Wednesay, Thursday, and Friday from 2 to 6 p.m. It can accommodate up to eighty visitors at anyone time, but access is limited to professionals or advanced students in art history, art, architecture, and design.
Latest update 02.18.1999 ⌐
CNAC-GP