Go big or go home, when a collection becomes too huge to be showed
The MAH version of the "Carte Blanche"
For its second "carte blanche", the director of the institution, Marc-Olivier Wahler invited the curator Jean-Hubert Martin to have a fresh eye on its collection. With more than 800 objects, organized by themes, the exhibition aim to cut back on what we've learned about art history and to be focus on the relation between each work of art and our personal feedback.
In a sense, the curator takes us though his walk into the archive and the storage of the museum, looking for treasures and new masterpieces in the vault. Beside the museum holding, numerous loans come from Genevan institutions, such as a beautiful picture by Opalka and a sculpture by Carl André and Richard Long.
Making the most out of the ground and first floor of the MAH, the exhibition is divided into twenty sequences drawn from all the collections and historical fields. With rooms divided by themes, the artwork is hanged from the ceilings, on the floors or on the walls, exploring and exploiting the viewers to create new relations with the work of art and the "precious" object which everyone own since the museum is public.
With the titled "Draw Your Own Conclusion" the exhibition is made for the public, for something easy to enjoy and something powerful to look at while questioning the basis of the museum and the institution.
The personage
Art historian and the former director of museums of Paris, Berne and Dusseldorf, and the curator of the exhibition Magiciens de la terre (1989). Jean-Hubert Martin as made one of the most groundbreaking exhibition of France, and Europe while including occidental oeuvre with non-occidental artist by comparing them visually and not in an intellectual way.
The process
The curator and her assistant curator Tijs Vissern as spend more than a year, immersed in the collection of the museum. They made a selection of many objects and started to tell a story with the use of maquette and exhibition’s trajectory.
After their choices, they needed to have a conservation trajectory. Due to the fragile of some of the works, or for aesthetic reasons, the curators and the conservator team of the museum has to ensure that each object was in good structural and esthetic condition.
With the go ahead, the curators start to think about a route for the show, a red line or a specific theme. With this show, they decided to make some grouping of objects around an encyclopedic point of view, both on the geographic and historical level.
In a sense, those juxtapositions are not exact, but they are similars.
PS: the next "carte blanche" will be curated by Ugo Rondinone".
Informations about the exhibition
Place: MAH
Date: 28.1.2022 – 19.6.2022
Curators: Jean-Hubert Martin and Tijs Vissern
Ticket: Available online OR at the front desk of the museum
Informations about the MAH
Rue Charles-Galland 2
CH-1206 Genève
Phone: +41 22 418 26 00
Mail: mah@ville-ge.ch