Museum of modern art Jean Large-Duke

the Museum of modern art Large-Duke Jean (shortened form: Mudam ) was created by the state of the Grand-Duché of Luxembourg under the impulse of the Prime Minister Jacques Santer in 1989 at the time of the 25 years festivities of reign of the Jean large-duke. For this reason it bears its name. Mudam is the Luxembourg counterpart of museums of contemporary art of international class such as the Center Pompidou (Paris), the Mamco (Geneva), the Moma (New York), etc

It occurred seventeen years between the moment when Ieoh Ming Pei was seen entrusting the architecture of the museum and the moment when the building could be inaugurated, in particular because of a local controversy as for the use which should have been made remainders of a fortress drawn by Vauban on which the bâtiment.
Entre 1999 is held (start date of work) and 2006, under the direction of Marie-Claude Beaud, the museum patiently constituted its collections (lent in the whole world while waiting), organized specific demonstrations and meetings with artists, and, finally, existed virtually thanks to its Internet site, conceived by the artist Claude Closky.

The opening to the public took place the July 2nd 2006 in the presence of the large-ducal family and of many representatives of royal families.

The place

The building of the museum is on the site of the Fort Thüngen in the park Dräi Éechelen (“three nipples” - in reference to the three nipples which decorates the three towers of the fortress), arranged by Michel Desvigne and located between the downtown area and the district Kirchberg (district of Europe).
Le traced Strong Thüngen was used to draw the plans of the future museum.

The exposures are presented on three levels (4 800 m2 of surfaces accessible to the public - and 10.000 on the whole).

The first year of opening, the Museum of Modern art Jean Large-Duke succeeded in attracting more than 115.000 visitors, which represents absolute records for a Luxembourg museum.

The philosophy of Mudam

The guiding principle of the museum is the " all-art" : in addition to works of course, the functional furniture of Mudam (armchairs, shop, coffee, Internet site, offices) is also a creation of artists Design ers. And this principle extends until filing: the photographer Pierre-Olivier Deschamps saw himself entrusting the task to in addition constitute the photographic memory of the construction of the musée.
of many artists present in the collections belong to the world of the design (mode, decoration, sound preparing, graphics), Mudam is thus always at the border which separates art " noble" (the “free” gesture) of a more utility art. This will of the " all-art" “Be the Artists' Guest is entitled” (the artist invites you).

The collections are not presented permanently and in an exhaustive way, a rotation is organized in the form of exposures on proposal of external or internal Curator S to the museum.

Collections

The collections of the museum contain works of many artists and designers such as: Alvar Aalto, Marina Abramović, Emmanuelle the Antille, Bernd and Hilla Beaker, Pierre Bismuth, Sophie Calle, Claude Closky, Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Damien Deroubaix, Jan Fabre, Günther Förg, Charles Fréger, Bernard Frize, Franz Gertsch, Nan Goldin, Marie-Angel Guilleminot, Andreas Gursky, Peter Halley, Thomas Hirschhorn, Fabrice Hybert, William Kentridge, Claude Lévêque, Long Richard, Michel Majerus, Martin Margiela, Steve McQueen, Bruce Nauman, Grayson Perry, Pipilotti Rist, Thomas Ruff, Julian Schnabel, Thomas Schütte, Cindy Sherman, Katharina Sieverding, Wolfgang Tillmans, Laure Tixier, Cy Twombly, Xavier Veilhan and Rémy Zaugg.

The scientific committee of the museum is composed of Carmen Giménez, preserving with the Musée Guggenheim (New York), Paul Reiles, director of the National museum of history and of art of Luxembourg, Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen, director of the Académie of the Art schools of Vienna and Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate Gallery (London), replaced in 2007 per Alfred Pacquement (Directing of the National museum of modern art - National center of art and culture Georges-Pompidou, Paris).

Exposures

Eldorado (exposure of opening) 7/1/2006 - 11/20/2006.
Michel Majerus (retrospective European) 12/9/2006 - 5/7/2007.
TOMORROW NOW - when design meets science fiction , 5/25/2007 - 9/24/2007.
" bloom! Experiments in Color Photography by Edward Steichen " 7/14/2007 - 9/3/2007
" Glenn Ligon : summon changes" 10/13/2007 - 2/19/2008
Mudam Guest House 07: François Boisrond, Cool Marie & Fabio Balducci, Pascal Convert, Wim Delvoye, Thomas Demand, James P. Graham, Charles Kaisin, Vera Weisgerber, Simon Jacquard, Yazid Oulab, Jan Wangaard " 10/13/2007 - 11/26/2007
" In connection with the places of origin, Portugal Agora" (Panorama of Portuguese contemporary creation) 12/15/2007 - 4/7/2008
" Michel Paysant - Nusquam" 12/15/2007 - 4/7/2008

Internet site

It is for the site that the name Mudam was found, which finally remained that of the museum. Marie-Claude Beaud, the director of Mudam, wanted to entrust the project of the site to an artist who can play with the codes of the multi-media one, which knows what is a museum and which would consider the site as an object which can be qualified of work of art.
Elle thus entrusted this project to Claude Closky, which separated information in three sections:

an institutional part, providing all the possible information on the museum and its topicality
a magazine, which diffuses original texts on art or the design. The interface of the magazine is a " prompteur" , i.e. the text is written in very large and ravels all alone, according to a skeletal speed by the user. The articles are not illustrated, except the diaporamas of Pierre Leguillon which them, are not commented on.
Of works on line ordered by the museum on a proposal from Claude Closky. Within this framework were produced works of Zhou Yi, Herve Graumann, Peter Kogler, François Curlet, the Circle Ramo Nash, Aleksandra Mir, David Shrigley, Etienne Cliquet, Entropy8zuper, Emmanuelle the Antille, Irational, Eric Maillet. The interface of this “iGalery” pastiche projects of " museums in 3D".

The institutional part of the site knew three distinct versions, in 2001,2003 and 2006. The first two versions rested on a diversion of the use of the windows known as “pop-up”, choice which has being given up because of bad reputation of the windows pop-up against which many software " bloquants" were create.

Personalities present at the inauguration

Mudam was inaugurated officially the Saturday the 1st er July 2006 in the presence of the Large-Duke Jean, to which is dedicated the museum and of his/her son the Large-Duke Henri, current sovereign of Luxembourg. The day of the inauguration of the museum coinciding with the 25^e wedding anniversary of the Henri Large-Duke, an unusual number of crowned heads were present:

reigning Monarchies: The Duke and the Duchess of the Brabant; The Queen Fabiola; The Crown prince and the Princess Heiress to the Denmark; Prince El Hassan Bin Talal and the Sarvath Princess of Jordan; Prince Philippe and the Isabelle Princess of Liechtenstein; The sovereign Prince Albert of Monaco; The Crown prince to Norway; The King and the Queen of Sweden
Monarchies not reigning: The duke Dom Duarte Pio and the duchess Gave Isabel de Bragança; The King and the Queen of Bulgaria; King Constantin and the queen Anne-Marie of Greece; The large-ducal Aga Khan
Family members: The Large-Duke Jean of Luxembourg, accompanied by his/her children and beautiful-children: the Henri large-duke and the Maria-Teresa large-duchess of Luxembourg, the archduke Carl-Christian and the archduchess Marie-Astrid of Austria, prince Jean of Luxembourg, prince Nicolas and the Margaretha princess of Liechtenstein, Prince Guillaume and the Sybilla Princess of Luxembourg. Grandchildren of the Jean large-duke were also present.
Others: Claude Wiseler, public Minister for Labor; Octavie Modert, Secretary of State to the Culture, Higher education and Research; Jacques Santer (former Prime Minister of Luxembourg and former president of the European commission), chairman of the board of Mudam; Ieoh Ming Pei, architect of the museum; Marie-Claude Beaud, director of the museum. Many artists whose works are present in the collections also attended the ceremony.

Controversies

The construction of the museum was not done without difficulties, and work took four years of delay.
To start, the selected place seemed inappropriate with certain which would have preferred there to see a museum of military history. Besides Mudam will be seen cutting down by 2000m2 to the profit of the future " museum of the forteresse". Certain detractors of the museum also qualified the collection of the museum of far from important . Of course, the budget (88 million euros) has also disputed him. The direction of the museum by a Frenchwoman made squeak some dents.
A small scandal concerning the choice of materials burst when the Luxembourg courts wondered whether the stone known as “magny gilded standard Louvre”, wanted by Pei to cover the édificie and delivered by a French company, were indeed “gilded magny”.
To finish, certain companies criticized the methods of attribution of the markets, qualifying the public tenders (invitations to tender) the irregular ones - a lawsuit is in hand.

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