Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1465756
ROMANCING THE STONES CARTIER'S BIJOUX BLOCKBUSTER — MORE THAN 400 OBJECTS SPANNING CENTURIES AND CONTINENTS — LANDS IN DALLAS, ITS ONLY AMERICAN VENUE Tell us about the making of this magnificent exhibition co- organized by the DMA and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (MAD), Paris, in collaboration with Musée du Louvre. Sarah Schleuning: I have had the privilege of working to bring this show to life over the last four years, spending the first half of this time traveling back and forth to Paris and Geneva, London, and New York prior to the impact of COVID-19. In the years before the pandemic, I spent much of my time exploring the main Cartier archive in Paris, in addition to the archives in New York and London. With an undergraduate degree in cultural anthropology from Cornell, (Continued) FROM TOP: PHOTO VINCENT WULVERYCK, CARTIER COLLECTION © CARTIER. CARTIER ARCHIVES, PARIS © CARTIER. C atherine D. Anspon speaks with Dallas Museum of Art's Sarah Schleuning, one of four international curators of "Cartier and Islamic Art: In Search of Modernity," opening at the DMA Saturday, May 14. Schleuning reveals insider tales from the archives of Cartier, and how Cartier's remarkable creations that sprang forth from the 1910s onward were inspired by sumptuous, centuries-old Islamic architecture, decorative and fine art, and jewelry. my fascination has always been in design and structure and pulling on the themes of cultural anthropology: intent, material culture, why people own things, why they keep them, what they mean, what they signify. Once the pandemic hit, we continued our partnership and planning over Zoom, overcoming the challenge of not being able to see the objects in person. Your curatorial approach to conceiving this exhibition. SS: To me, this show has always been about looking at Cartier through a lens of individuals and what they look back at, what they absorb, how that affects what they make — the cyclical nature of it. You see contemporary designers at Cartier looking back through multiple layers of information and ideas. It's interesting, because it's about creativity and what sparks creativity, and how sources float through people's creative ideas, and how they show up in different ways. I think part of the idea of the show was to trace and name those potential origins and say that all creativity is sparked by other things. Critical to this project was having two Islamic curators and two design curators, who each brought diverse points of knowledge to build the narrative of what these Islamic collections meant. "Cartier and Islamic Art" and today's world. What's modern about this exhibition? SS: To put it in contemporary terms, the advent of photography and magazines was the Instagram of the moment — of the 19th century and turn of the century. To me, going through these research materials is very much like shuffling through Instagram. Louis Cartier, Jacques Cartier, and all the designers at Cartier were inspired by ideas found in these photographs and portfolios, and by exhibitions they saw. Curatorial team. SS: Judith Hénon-Raynaud from the Louvre, deputy director of Islamic art. She had done some research on pen boxes owned by Louis. Évelyne Possémé is curator of jewelry at MAD, and Heather Ecker is our former curator of Islamic art at the DMA. And me. I say four-plus because we had tremendous help from Pascale Lepeu, the curator of collections at Cartier, and Violette Petit, head of the Bandeau, Cartier Paris, made as a special order for Madame Ossa Ross, 1923. Platinum, diamonds. Jacques Cartier, circa 1910s 42