Metropolitan Museum and watchmaker Vacheron Constantin launch artist residency

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 strategies. The residency, formally launched on 6 June, will final 18 months and permit artists to spend time with the collections and workers of the Met, in addition to the grasp artisans at Vacheron Constantin’s Geneva headquarters.

The three inaugural artists participating within the Artisan Residency initiative are the US furniture-maker Aspen Golann, the Egyptian ceramic artist Ibrahim Mentioned 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 creative innovation and cultural dialogue,” Max Hollein, the director and chief govt of the Met, stated in an announcement, including that the chosen artists “are remarkably expert practitioners who breathe new life into conventional strategies”.

Golann, who is predicated in New Hampshire and teaches on the Rhode Island College of Design, is educated in historic US furniture-making practices spanning the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. She employs these strategies to foreground points associated to labour, gender and energy in a apply that features drawings, handheld useful objects and furnishings.

Mentioned comes from a household of ceramicists in Fustat, Egypt, and first realized pottery from his father. His work reinterprets kinds and strategies from historic Egyptian ceramic vessels, tailored with a up to date and at instances even futuristic sculptural sensibility.

Educated as a chemist, Harvey pivoted careers and devoted herself to jewellery-making practically 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 imagine deeply within the energy of artwork to ignite curiosity and, on the identical time, to redefine creative and cultural boundaries,” Heidi Holder, the museum’s chair of schooling, stated in an announcement. “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 workers to tell, encourage and assist the reimagining of conventional craft information and strategies for the subsequent generations.”