Construire une Collection
(Building a Collection)
22 January–7 June 2015
Nouveau Musée National de Monaco
Villa Paloma
56 boulevard du Jardin Exotique
98000 Monaco
T +377 98 98 20 95
presse [at] nmnm.mc
Nouveau Musée National de Monaco (NMNM) presents Construire une Collection (Building a Collection), an exhibition of a selection of works purchased over the past ten years. It will take place in both exhibition areas of the NMNM, first of all from January at the Villa Paloma, and then from March at the Villa Sauber.
Since by definition a national museum is rooted in the history of the country in which is it situated, its mission is to acquire, preserve and promote collections to help safeguard the natural, cultural and scientific heritage. Over the years, the NMNM’s collection has therefore been enriched—in light of Monaco as a unique territory and the historical collections from the former Museum of Fine Arts (Musée des Beaux-Arts), the long-term loan of a collection of theatrical items from the Société des Bains, a donation of dolls and automata collected by Madeleine de Galéa—with works purchased, donated or on long-term loan thanks to state funding and the support of private patrons, particularly the Association of Friends of the NMNM and UBS AG, the Museum’s main partner.
The enhancement of a collection of heritage or historical importance is inextricably linked to considering contemporary art, because it is through living artists that the link between the past, present and future is maintained. The idea of contemporaneity is therefore self-evident, and, one could say, absolutely essential.
The exhibition at the Villa Paloma will therefore feature works by William Anastasi, Richard Artschwager, Michel Blazy, Pascal Broccolichi, Daniel Gustav Cramer, Alain Declercq, Jean Dubuffet, Hubert Duprat, Jan Fabre, Jean-Pascal Flavien, Geert Goiris, Gary Hill, Rebecca Horn, Anish Kapoor, Jochen Lempert, Yinka Shonibare MBE, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, Su‑Mei Tse and Cerith Wyn Evans. These artists offer a revisiting of form and Nature through narrative and form-related ideas, with the aim of re‑appropriating Nature in their own way to give it a new symbolic meaning, opening up a broad area of discussion on redefining landscape while highlighting the relationship between art and science.
The second part of the exhibition will open to the public on 21 March at the Villa Sauber, which has housed the Madeleine de Galéa Collection of Dolls and Automata for the past 35 years until 2009. It will bring together works by Arman, Robert Barry, Christian Boltanski, Lourdes Castro, César, Mark Dion, Erró, Hans‑Peter Feldmann, Claire Fontaine, Lucio Fontana, Loïe Fuller, Jeppe Hein, Claude Monet, Linda Fregni Nagler, Camille Henrot, Bertrand Lavier, Anne and Patrick Poirier, Hans Schabus and William Turner. Most of the works presented here were either inspired by collections or the collections themselves have become works of art or have inspired works of art; in other words, a collection of collections.
Construire une Collection (Building a Collection) is also an opportunity to review progress made since the project for the Museum was first conceived just over ten years ago in 2003, and five years after the opening of the Villa Paloma (September 2010), which, with the Villa Sauber, definitively formed the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco.
