The Hauts-de-Seine Museum, enlarged and embellished thanks to the intervention of the Kengo Kuma architect, magnifies the work of the philanthropist as a whole, from his garden to his color photographs collection.
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This is a constellation of small images that welcomes the visitor in the new Albert-Kahn museum, in Boulogne-Billancourt: on the 72,000 precious autochromes of the collection, this color process on glass plate, marketed by the brothers Light from 1907, 2,860 were reproduced and backlit, composing on the wall a mosaic with enchanting colors.
“We took a picture on twenty-seven in the collection, chronologically,” says the delegated director for conservation, Magali Melandri. A random selection that gives the visitor an idea of the scale and especially the variety of this unique collection in the world, the “archives of the planet”, captured through about fifty countries, from 1909 to 1931. We cross Shimmering pictures of distant countries, but also many photos taken in France and often less cheerful: First World War, destructions, refugees, social movements …
Pacifist ideal
The Albert-Kahn Museum, Treasury of the Department of Hauts-de-Seine, has a new youth after six years of work, which cost 60 million euros and multiplied by five public spaces. The project, served by a new building and renovations signed by Japanese Kengo Kuma, had to answer the challenges posed by this singular place, installed on the historical property of its founder, Albert Kahn (1860-1940): how to showcase a collection Autochrome (process based on potato starch), so fragile that we can not expose originals? And how to make known the work of Albert Kahn, a philanthropic banker who spent all his fortune to defend his pacifist and internationalist ideal, before dying ruined, in 1940?
The designers had the good idea to focus on this founder so discreet he refused to be photographed. His various achievements are presented as a whole, serving his dream of progress and global harmony: the “archives of the planet”, but also his garden, as well as his different foundations. The set is revealed in the new building and the pavilions, as and when a very free and playful course, truffled with displays, projections and interactive terminals. “There are no draws or enlargements, the images were seen at the time in the form of a projection, and they have a great affinity with digital”, “says the director of the museum, Nathalie Doury.
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