Where are the museums with regard to craftwork?

Thursday, January 24th: 11:15 a.m. -12:15 p.m., Arcole room

Where are the museums with regard to craftwork?

 

In 1980, almost fourty years ago, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, under the direction of its very inventive director, François Mathey, organised an Artiste? Artisan?exhibition that presented all the works without attribution. The concept was brilliant: to break with received ideas, preconceptions and snobbery. The routine clichés relating to creativity.

The question is still relevant: where are the museums with regard to arts and crafts? Do they come into their collections? Are they objects for exhibition or reflection? Do they fall within the field of culture or the economy? Why do they not enjoy the ambivalent status of design?

Are arts and crafts simply locked away in a kind of manual skill, infinitely repeating itself, and in which tradition takes precedence over creative invention?

Can arts and crafts exist without innovating and transforming?

To try to answer these questions, we are fortunate to be able to bring together three eminent contributors: Lyne Cohen-Solal, President of INMA (French National Institute for Arts and Crafts), who is well known for her dynamism in the promotion of arts and crafts.Olivier Gabet, Director of the Museum of Decorative Arts, who, fiftyyears on, will give us the museum’s point of view. And, to illustrate the complexity, the economic and cultural dynamism of arts and crafts, we will have a contribution from Lison de Caunes, Master of Arts, Member of the Grands Ateliers de France, who has (re)made straw marquetry into an art acclaimed worldwide for its modernity.