It is a flagship element of “Cité du Design 2025” which was inaugurated this Wednesday in Saint-Etienne. Project desired by the previous governance. That of the Métropole commune and the presidency of the Cité du design on which this EPCC depends more particularly. Supported by the State, the National Design Gallery opened its doors on June 10, in the heart of the former Arms Manufacture, behind the so-called “Horloge” Building. 1,000 m2 aiming to offer France, not just Stéphanois, the first permanent space presenting design collections from across the country. The “Design in Hand” exhibition opens the ban for one year.
Physically accessible. Financially accessible. Once the big free inaugural weekend has passed, on June 13 and 14, it will be €2 for the entry ticket, we are told. The “introductory” price is in fact valid at least until the end of summer, which was decided by the board of directors of the Cité du design. This a few days before the press visit. This took place on Tuesday June 9, the day before the opening to the general public of the National Design Gallery. With success in attracting the national press, a priori specialized, with regard to the non-local colleagues crossed and largely in the majority. “It’s the big day, finallyaddresses Aurélie Voltz, director of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. This project had been worked on for 5 years.”
If the director of the MAMC+ is speaking, it is because her metropolitan establishment co-operates in the management of the premises with the Cité du Design, directed by Eric Jourdan. Its new president, Yannis Bekhti, who belongs to a political majority inaugurating a project desired by his predecessor in connection with the State, tells us that it was appropriate not to burden the public with this new equipment which did not require new recruitments. Everyone has their role in the same container: at the Museum, the development of the proposed content. At the City, its communication and via its students its mediation. These are provisions which will necessarily bring the former and new majority into agreement. This equipment, presented as unique, nevertheless required €8.8 million in investment, including €6.8 million financed by Saint-Etienne Métropole (we do not have the answer at the time of publishing these lines on the annual operating cost incurred). The rest by the State: the national interest of the project and its launch having been confirmed by Emmanuel Macron himself in September 2022.
La Galerie locomotive de Cité du Design 2025
It is part of another, local one: “Cité du Design 2025”. The latter, which has been the subject of numerous debates in metropolitan assembly in recent years – a number of elected officials, from all sides, but particularly those now in power in Saint-Etienne, believing that its adoption had knowingly lacked transparency – had to see the arrival of leisure activities, places of relaxation, entertainment, and businesses within the City… by 2025. Public/private project which, with the notable exception of the Gallery, is still struggling to emerge and is supposed to involve tens of millions of public money. Will it continue – at least as it stands – with the arrival of the new metropolitan majority? The Gallery was in any case, in the idea, the place of locomotive. And it is there, located on the Jacques-Bonneval esplanade, behind the so-called “Horloge” building.
“It’s a neighborhood in full developmentcontextualized Eric Jourdan in front of the press on Tuesday. And the Design Gallery is a strong element for its attractiveness. And between what is already done on a daily basis by the Cité, its Biennale, opening a permanent collection space for design objects, this could only be done in Saint-Etienne. It is a coherent ecosystem. Everything is consistent.” Because in France there was no permanent place dedicated to the exhibition of public collections labeled “design”, i.e. 30,000 objects all the same, largely more stored than shown, recalled Aurélie Voltz: “London has its museum, Milan its exhibition space. Madrid, Brussels, Zurich also have something… Since Wednesday, France has been able to count on Saint-Etienne! What is now exhibited here does not only come from Saint-Etienne: MAMC+, Museum of Art and Industry, otherwise Cinémathèque de Saint-Étienne and Departmental Archives of the Loire. HAS
With the additions of Pompidou
The Gallery already values or will value, on the basis of circulation, loans, the works of the Center Pompidou, the CNAP (National Center for Plastic Arts), founding member, the MADD-Bordeaux, the Frac Grand Large, the Museum of Decorative Arts of Paris and Bordeaux, the Manufactures Nationales – Sèvres & Mobilier national, as well as other institutions, throughout the exhibitions. Each year, it will present a major exhibition constructed by a guest curator using pieces from collections kept across the country. The first three years are already determined with three commissioners and three projects already selected even if Yannis Bekhti, cautious, slips us a little later that “the new public governance does not refrain from developing the program, depending on the reception and initial feedback from Stéphanois”. Will they be decisive for this? The attendance targets, if any, were not yet communicated to us this Wednesday evening.
As for the first annual exhibition, the action is in any case off. In a setting with a scenography designed by, of course, a designer, Eric Benqué, so that the raw material – poplar wood – can be reused in the years to come, is Laurence Mauderli, design historian and teacher at ESAD Saint-Étienne who opens the exhibition “Design in hand. From language to object” will be held until March 7, 2027. : “By bringing together nearly 400 pieces from public collections (part of which concerns Manufrance including elements entrusted by the Stéphanois)this exhibition offers a true design epic. From Saint-Etienne industrial culture to contemporary perspectives, including the great changes of the 20th centurye and 21e centuries, the imagined journey highlights the way in which objects, passed from hand to hand, carry the memory of societies while opening new paths.
The language of the object, the object of language,
Between “heritages, diversions, ruptures and reinventions, we (re)discover a design in constant evolution, capable of questioning our relationship to the world and sketching the forms of tomorrow”. Starting from the word “manufacture” and its etymological origin, the commissioner says to draw “a thread that leads from the question of the hand to that of industrial production, via the production of language and popular expressions. His idea: to create a link with the public, not only through objects, but also through words. Its initial postulate: an expression and a design object are characterized by a coherence of forms and meaning, and each deviate in their own way from established standards. Its ambition: to show that design is both a language and a practice anchored in time and territories.” The exhibition is thus organized into distinct sections based on the expression of language around the hands: “Put your hand to the dough”, “With your bare hands”, “Have in hand”, “From hand to hand”, “Losing your hand”, “Taking your hand”.
Little video tour to get an idea of it on our Youtube channel.
