After a building-wide closure – barely 19 months – the Saint-Étienne Métropole Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art has just reopened to the public. In the meantime, the construction signed by the architect Didier Guichard has undergone its first in-depth restructuring since its inauguration in 1987. The blackout films have been removed from the windows to restore their zenithal light to the spaces, the resin floor has given way to terrazzo, the course has been completely redesigned thanks to new hollow partitions allowing the circulation of technical staff, the air conditioning has been replaced by a less energy-consuming system… An important work by Jean-Pierre Raynaud in white tiles, hidden behind a wall since 2003, reappeared at the entrance to the museum to renew the dialogue with the black ceramic facade of the building. The museum team led by Aurélie Voltz took advantage of the need to completely empty the reserves to carry out a condition report on all the works kept there. Based on this constraint, she also imagined part of the programming planned for its reopening. Invisible for decades, the institution's collection of ancient art, inherited from the Museum of Art and Industry of Saint-Étienne, its ancestor, is presented in several rooms for the first time, with Charles Le Brun, José Frappa, Hippolyte-Jean Flandrin… A space also allows the public to follow the live restoration of paintings which show the weight of the years. The large works from the collection which could not be moved are brought together in a display entitled “Hors format”. These rooms allow you to find some of the masterpieces from the collection signed by Gerhard Richter, Frank Stella, Julian Schnabel, Pierre Soulages or Erik Dietman, under the curatorship of Zoé Marty. The curator Alexandre Quelle has for his part brought together works entered into the collection by donation, with Alain Kirili or Hans-Peter Feldmann, but also important groups of artists to be rediscovered, such as Bernard Joubert (1946), Charles-Henri Monvert ( 1948-2018), Lena Vandrey (1941-2018) and Max Wechsler (1925-2020).
View of the exhibition “Collections stand the test of time” at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art – Saint-Étienne Métropole. Photo: Philippe Régnier
During the reopening weekend, from November 8 to 11, 2024 – free days which were intended to be particularly festive – the institution welcomed nearly 8,350 visitors. “ Never before seen at the museum », depending on the place which is also showing for the occasion… never seen before.
