After color and nature, the Lodève Museum chooses to weave the imagination

After Weave color (2015), then Weaving nature (2021), the Lodève Museum continues its exchanges with the Mobilier national and the Lodève carpet workshop with Weaving the imaginationvisible since October 19. The new exhibition explores the notion of figurative or abstract imagination in the art of tapestry through 20 monumental ancient and modern works, made from artists’ canvases or cardboards.

Three entries and a dialogue between ancient and modern

“We started this adventure on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Lodève factory. Through its history, its heritage and its past, the city is linked to textiles. This is why I want to develop these exchanges with Furniture national” indicates Ivonne Papin-Drastik, the director of the Lodève Museum. With this time, the desire to escape reality through a new theme. “I wanted to distance myself from a heavy daily life and take an interest in the imagination. By showing the different forms it can take depending on the artists and the eras.” Structured around three entrances, the route brings together ancient and modern tapestries.

“We start from a familiar imagination, from our childhood around tales, fables, mythology with representations linking scenes of known characters.” Like the tapestry 5.51 meters wide by 2.65 meters height representing a painting by Jean Veber Le Petit Poucet (1920) which opens the exhibition “The journey continues with the representations, which give free rein to imagination and interpretation. elsewhere with the transcription of memories.

Tapestries and a rug

With a carpet in the middle of 19 tapestries, the colorful and bright one by Nathalie Junod-Ponsard, Mirage, which fell from the Lodévois looms in 2020.
“To make things accessible to as many people as possible, they must be decompartmentalized, mix the old and the contemporary, allow the visitor to project themselves. This is particularly the case with this carpet, which allows us to open minds and ‘imaginary preciselycontinues Ivonne Papin-Drastik. Exhibiting only carpets is complicated at the museum. But I want to show each time a work from the Lodève workshop and salute the remarkable work that is done there.”