WOMWN ARTISTS IN THE COLLETION OF THE MUSEE NATIONAL ART MODERNE

From 27th May 2009, historical collections of Musée national d'Art Moderne in Paris will be devoted to women: more than two hundred artists represented by more than five hundred works on about 25000 square feet. For the first time in the history of Museums and in one of its most important representative, the collections will be showed from that unique point of view : gendered, and feminine. Contrasting with the various exhibitions which toured recently in USA and europe about art and feminism, or women in the avant-garde in the first part of the century, this presentation of the collection will span a wide variety of movements and themes, From the invention of abstraction by Sonia Delaunay and Sophie Taeuber Arp to the strong involvement of women artists in new technologies (from photography to video and performances). Monographic rooms devoted to great figures of the century (Sonia Delaunay, Natalie Gontcharova, Dora Maar, Eileen Gray, Charlotte Perriand, Joan Mitchell, Gina pane, Annette Messager to name a few) will interrupt a thematic journey into the first european collection of XXth century art. Still under scrutiny, the chapters of this journey could be a new definition of the body, a passionate political and social involvement, an oblique practice of abstraction, A critical analysis of space – domestic or architectural, etc. Design, architecture, cinema : none of the contemporary techniques escaped the growing presence of women in art and their desire to renew the categories. bridging, crossing, mixing, going further : women have been the strongest advocates of breaking the barriers between disciplines. in that sense they represent the collections of Mnam-Cci at its best : unique by its encyclopaedic scope, global strategy, and multi disciplinary works.