Interview with Constance Rubini

In the heart of the city of Bordeaux, the Museum of Design and the Decorative Arts (MADD) is a window on the world and a mirror of its own metamorphoses. The museum seeks out artists and designers who have a flair for sharing insights into the evolutions and upheavals affecting modern-day society. Indeed, one of the purposes of design is to shed light on these transformations. Transformed into a museum, this beautiful mansion built at the end of the 18th century is emblematic of Bordeaux, a UNESCO world heritage site. Various creators are regularly invited to show their work, to engage in experiments and to interact with the public.

Given the new challenges that face all museums in these early years of the 21st century, the director of the museum, Constance Rubini, has strived to make the Madd-bordeaux not just a simple repository of artistic heritage, but a living cultural space, a place to spotlight deserving talents and to offer educational opportunities, forging a role and an identity in keeping with the entrepreneurial landscape of Bordeaux. 

In parallel with the permanent displays, the Madd team offers a dynamic program of temporary exhibitions on the decorative arts and design, often highlighting tableware, reflecting the central role of food and drink in the culture of our region :

The Houselife exposition in 2016 : This collection, one of the largest in Europe, contains some of the most significant works of contemporary designers, French and international alike. This project is an opportunity to offer pieces of furniture and other objects the context which was originally theirs: a domestic world.

Construction - Martin Szekely in 2018 : The musée des Arts Décoratifs et du Design has invited the designer Martin Szekely to show his work in its new exhibition space, a former jail located behind the hôtel de Lalande. Created between 1996 and 2018, these objects and pieces of furniture seem to reinvent their own composition: all are the result of a structural challenge.

Memphis - Plastic field in 2019 : The cultural season starting in Bordeaux in June 2019 was dedicated to Freedom.

The Museum of Decorative Arts and Design took part in this by hosting, in the former prison, the exhibition Memphis – Plastic Field, which was presented in 2018 at the Berengo Foundation alongside the 16th Venice Architecture Exhibition. Bringing together over 160 iconic works designed between 1981 and 1988, Memphis Plastic Field highlights the irreverent and subversive spirit of all these young designers. As well as these masterpieces, about thirty vases produced in Murano are exhibited.

Oh Couleurs in 2017: If the subject of colour is often dismissed by design historians, this is because it remains difficult to grasp. Colour does not exist per se, it is only perceptible in light, and it varies depending on its quantity, the surface receiving it, and the eye looking at it.

So nothing definitive can be said about colour. The aim of this exhibition is thus to question colour from different angles and viewpoints, particularly by giving the floor to experts in the fields of design, fashion, industry and sociology.