GENEVA'S MUSEUM OF ART AND HISTORY

The (MAH) has enlisted leading French curator Jean-Hubert Martin to breathe new life into the museum’s permanent collection and challenge traditional ways of showing art.

Since the second half of the 19th-century, museum conservation and display techniques have become increasingly sophisticated, leading to considerable advancements but often neglecting principles of discovery and play. Departing from this observation, Martin spent almost two years studying MAH’s permanent collection to select items based on analogical correspondences such as colours, shapes, and proportions rather than pre-existing geographical and historical narratives.

Draw Your Own Conclusion is conceived as a series of analogical sequences. Swiss painter François Diday’s 1867 landscape Cascade of Giessbach, is in conversation with fellow Swiss artist Jacques-Laurent Agasse’s 1837 La Fontaine Personnifiée, which depicts a fantastical nymph inspired by English romanticism. Drawing on the mythical story of the birth of Venus, this pairing is complemented by Kabuki Japanese prints of the same period, etc.

" Today, most museum exhibitions adhere to chronological and medium-based display methods, grouping works by movements, schools, or historical moments. This systematic division too often restricts the possibilities of resonance between artifacts from different cultures, whose encounters are judged ahistorical. Despite the challenges, museums ought to be places of unexpected encounters which value knowledge but also human sensitivity and instinct.” - Curator Jean Hubert Martin

Musée d'art et d'histoire de Genève, photo: Julien Gremaud

About Jean-Hubert Martin

A leading figure of the international art world, Jean-Hubert Martin started his career at the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris before moving to the Centre Pompidou, where he played a significant role in its creation. Over the course of his four-decade career, he has curated numerous monographic exhibitions, from Man Ray to Francis Picabia and Kazimir Malevich to Salvador Dalí, among many others. He was the curator of the French pavilion at the Biennale of Sydney in 1982, the year he also became the director of the Kunsthalle Berne. He went on to direct several other institutions, including the Musée National d’Art Moderne – Centre Pompidou, the Musée national des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie in Paris and the Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf. Additionally, he has acted as art director of the Château d’Oiron in western France, the Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea in Milan, and the Lyon and Moscow biennials. Martin’s long-standing interest in disrupting established museological practices was reflected in landmark exhibitions including Magiciens de la terre (MNAM – Centre Pompidou, 1989); Art et publicité (MNAM – Centre Pompidou, 1990); Altäre (The Kunstpalast, 2002); Africa Remix (The Kunstpalast, 2004); Une image peut en cacher une autre (RMN – Grand Palais, 2009); Théâtre du monde (La Maison Rouge, 2013) and Carambolages (RMN – Grand Palais, 2016).