CULTURE: Dijon arbitrates elegance at the Museum of Fine Arts
The exhibition judged this Friday, May 13 was designed through an exceptional collaboration with the Palais Galliera, Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris
In total, eight rooms have been completely converted into the Museum of Fine Arts for the exhibition “A la mode. The art of appearing in the 18th century”, on view until August 22.
This exhibition brings together more than 140 objects from the 18th century and takes place over a course of four chapters. The first endeavors to deactivate the acceleration of fashion phenomena, the second stages painters as actors in the “factory of fashion”, the third, “Fantaisies d’artistes”, explores the links between pictorial worlds imaginaries and clothes made iconic.
Finally, the last part, “For a history of the negligee”, takes a unique look at the growing vogue for the negligee in the male and female wardrobe, from the dressing gown to the Empire dress, from the vestal veils to the antique negligee.
Francois Rebsamen
Mayor of Dijon
“I have just visited this magnificent exhibition which awaits you and looking at the absolutely exceptional presentation which has been made, I would like to express my thanks to the curator of the museum Frédérique Goerig-Hergott and Sandrine Vallant for this magnificent exhibition “fashionable in the 18th century”. and then of course to those who allowed us to make this beautiful exhibition. I will mention the Musée de Nantes which is co-curator and then the Musée de la Mode de Paris. This is the first time that such an exhibition presents both paintings and at the same time period costumes and textiles.
I said to myself as I walked through the exhibition “How this Age of Enlightenment, which saw the birth of fashion, could have ended with the noise and the fury that was the French Revolution. I think that this beauty of fabrics and this discovery of fashion may have generated some frustrations in the French population, which was far removed for the most part from these practices and these means.
Keep this Age of Enlightenment in view for us and you will see a program that is very ambitious and you will thus become interpreters of this fashion yourself and perhaps you will find current trends in the appearance of design and other flowers painted on minds and dressing gowns. Through fashion and habits the will to appear always shines through and therefore the painting traces this.
We can be proud of what this museum brings to our city in terms of influence and possibility. We are going to develop it further in order to allow as many people as possible to access culture. It is our dearest wish, to popularize everything that can raise the level of knowledge of the inhabitants of our city and our department. »
Frederique Goerig-Hergott
chief curator
“This is a major exhibition and the first since the inauguration and renovation of the Museum of Fine Arts in 2019. The pandemic has slowed the pace of exhibition projects but has made it possible to rethink and reorganize them differently in tenant takes account of Dijon’s own heritage and its cultural environment. Thus, À la mode was designed in exceptional collaboration with the “Palais Galliera” (Musée de la Mode de la ville de Paris). The exhibition was co-produced with the Musée d’Art de Nantes.
“I am particularly proud of the teams of the 5 museums in Dijon and I would like to thank Mayor François Rebsamen and his cultural assistant Christine Martin. The whole team and all the services of the museums of Dijon have contributed to ensuring that this event contributes to the influence of the museum of fine arts and the influence of Dijon on the local, regional and international level and this since the reception of the museum. »
“This exhibition brings together nearly 140 works and it is also the first dedicated to fashion which combines costumes, textiles, models of embroidered fabrics, clothes and accessories by confronting them with the works of painted art. À la mode evokes in 4 chapters and 8 rooms the interferences between the visual arts and fashion. The birth of trades around fashion, specific businesses. »
“The exhibition has benefited from exceptional loans, notably from the Renaissance museum in Écouen, the fabric museum in Lyon, the Versailles museum and the Louvre, as well as the French museum in Besançon. There have been exceptional loans from London from private collections but also local loans, notably from the Dijon library.
This exhibition made it possible to reveal the richness of the collections of the museums of Dijon, in particular with works from the museum of Burgundian life, graphic arts and paintings from the museum of fine arts which were restored for the occasion. »