The Metropolitan Museum of Artwork in New York is teaming up with the Swiss watchmaker Vacheron Constantin to launch a residency for artists whose practices incorporate craft or artisanal supplies and methods. The residency, formally launched on 6 June, will final 18 months and permit artists to spend time with the collections and employees of the Met, in addition to the grasp artisans at Vacheron Constantin’s Geneva headquarters.
The three inaugural artists collaborating within the Artisan Residency initiative are the US furniture-maker Aspen Golann, the Egyptian ceramic artist Ibrahim Stated and the British Italian jewelry designer Pleasure Harvey. The programme’s inaugural run will culminate in October 2026, when the artists will present new work on the Met.
“This initiative embodies our mutual dedication to inventive innovation and cultural dialogue,” Max Hollein, the director and chief govt of the Met, stated in a press release, including that the chosen artists “are remarkably expert practitioners who breathe new life into conventional methods”.
The nice corridor on the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork Picture: Brett Beyer
Golann, who is predicated in New Hampshire and teaches on the Rhode Island Faculty of Design, is educated in historic US furniture-making practices spanning the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. She employs these methods to foreground points associated to labour, gender and energy in a apply that features drawings, handheld purposeful objects and furnishings.
Stated comes from a household of ceramicists in Fustat, Egypt, and first discovered pottery from his father. His work reinterprets varieties and methods from historical Egyptian ceramic vessels, tailored with a recent and at occasions even futuristic sculptural sensibility.
Educated as a chemist, Harvey pivoted careers and devoted herself to jewellery-making almost a decade in the past. In 2021, she and Marco Rossi based the Rimini-based studio La Luce, whose supplies are all sustainably sourced; the gold and silver they use is 100% fair-mined, they usually solely make use of traceable gem stones and diamonds.
“On the Met, we consider deeply within the energy of artwork to ignite curiosity and, on the identical time, to redefine inventive and cultural boundaries,” Heidi Holder, the museum’s chair of training, stated in a press release. “This residency is a testomony to that perception, providing the artisans entry to our assortment, scholarly sources and the experience of Met scientists, curators, educators and employees to tell, encourage and help the reimagining of conventional craft data and methods for the following generations.”
