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.
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 the 2 october 1998 ⌐ CNAC-GP