Lectures “From the indus­trial museum to mudac at Plate­­forme 10”

Located on the Plate­­forme 10 site since 2021, mudac – Museum of Contem­­por­ary Design and Applied Arts is part of a rich insti­tu­­tional herit­age. Taking its current name when it moved into the old town of Lausanne in 2000, it is the successor to several museums in Vaud’s capital, the first of which opened its doors at the end of the 19^th century. The aim of the Musée indus­triel (1862 – 1905) was to promote regional indus­tries and to educate appren­­tices and the general public. At first, its collec­­tion resembled a cabinet of curi­os­it­ies. In 1905, due to lack of space, the museum’s collec­­tion was split in two. The decor­at­ive arts pieces were moved to Palais de Rumine, which was then known as the Musée d’art indus­triel, while the exhib­its relat­ing to regional indus­tries were trans­­ferred to the École des Méti­ers in 1919.

Its successor, the Musée d’art indus­triel (1909–1952), would go on to have a long history under­­go­ing numer­­ous changes, not least its name. In 1946, it became the Musée d’art indus­triel et d’art décor­atif, and in 1952, the Musée d’art décor­atif. Some of the ceram­ics acquired during this period are still housed here today. The Musée des arts décor­at­ifs (1967–2000) moved to a new district in Villa­­mont and consol­id­ated its acquis­i­­tion policy around discip­lines such as glass art, graphic arts, ceram­ics, and jewellery.

Under the new name of mudac (2000 – 2021), the museum moved to Place de la Cathéd­rale and contin­ued to expand its collec­­tions, while broad­en­ing its interests to include the world of design, both local and inter­­n­a­­tional.

Since its relo­ca­­tion to the Plate­­forme 10 arts district in 2022, mudac has been chan­­ging its scope and refin­ing its iden­tity through acquis­i­­tions that seek to reflect the constant evol­u­­tion of the vari­ous fields of design. Intrins­ic­ally linked to these differ­­ent museums, the collec­­tion is obvi­ously impacted by these frequent changes and will, over the years, be the subject of several reor­­gan­isa­­tions and trans­fers of works. This obser­­va­­tion has led the current mudac to ask the follow­ing ques­­tion: in what ways do the name changes and the invent­or­ies of these differ­­ent museums shed light on the acquis­i­­tion policies of the people in charge of these insti­tu­­tions, and on the trends of their time?

• Lecture by Isaline Deléder­ray-Oguey, lecturer at the Insti­tut d’his­toire de l’art et de muséo­lo­gie, Univer­sity of Neuchâtel.
• Round table discus­sion moder­ated by Chantal Prod’Hom, director of mudac from 2000 to 2022, and Anik Zanzi, curator of the Collec­tion de l’Art Brut, who has conduc­ted research on the Musée des arts décor­at­ifs de Lausanne.
• Round table moder­ated by Claire FitzGer­ald, Chief Curator of the Musée Ariana, the Swiss Museum of Ceram­ics and Glass, Alex­an­dre Fiette, Curator of Applied Arts and the Maison Tavel at the Musée d’art et d’his­toire de Genève (MAH), and Estelle Fallet, Chief Curator of Watches, Enamel­ware, Jewellery and Mini­atures at the MAH.