May the 17th, Bibliothèque de Musée des Arts Décoratifs

Originating in 1864, the Bibliothèque de Musée des Arts Décoratifs is a mecca for researchers and art historians within the subject matter of the decorative arts. Its mandate was to celebrate the useful that is made beautiful and the culture within France that surrounded that. Previously known as the Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs (UCAD) for several years, the name was changed to Les Arts Décoratifs. Despite the name change, the institution prided itself in staying true to its original aims of safeguarding the collections it held, promoting culture, and providing art education and professional training. The collection within the museum is one of the largest in Paris, combining a wide variety of items from various fields within decorative and applied arts.

The Louvre.

So. Many. Prints.

Béatrice Krikorian was our guide for today’s visit to the reading room of the museum, and she pulled out one of the collection’s main claims to fame with photographic context. The reading room boasts one of the largest collections of Henri Le Seqc works, a collection that was actually given to the museum by the Le Seqc family. Consisting of around 600-700 prints, negatives and cyanotypes, most of the collection has been digitized and placed in an online archive. The prints are not only massive, I can’t recall many that were smaller than a hefty 8x10, they were stunning. Beautiful, crisp images of church architecture and forest scenes were continuously pulled from boxes. The negatives were even more extraordinary, since I don’t think I had ever seen one that large.

So beautiful.

Peter, acting as a negative holder.

Ooo, nudes!

Obviously the reading room does have other photographers within their collection, Marville and Atget are two notable ones. The reading room’s collection is entirely done by subject and themes, rather than the photographers. In a way, it’s much like the Musée de Carnavalet prior to their reorganization into a specific photographic collection. When the reading room was being put together, the material that was coming into it was arranged by motifs, designs and themes that could be studied by artisans, designers and students alike. In recent times, Krikorian mentions that around 2000-3000 photographs were pulled form the collection to be restored and cleaned. This created a large debate since it was felt that the conservation efforts, which also segregated the works was contradicting the museum’s mandate of dissemination and having the works publicly available. Since the albums within the reading rooms are well used and well handle, the argument for conservation efforts is still strong, in the meantime new handling rules for patrons have helped a little.

A negative, housed in mylar and archival board.

A print, housed in mylar and archival board.

All photographs by A Cook.