Jean Jacques Bachelier (director), pair of Vases Ruche (Beehive Vases), ca. 1769–75. Glazed and gilded soft-paste porcelain. Manufacture et Musée nationaux, Sèvres, MNC 2022.2.1, .2.
This research symposium, organized in conjunction with the Bard Graduate Center exhibition Sèvres Extraordinaire! Sculpture from 1740 until Today, will explore the storied history of innovation at the manufactory. Presentations from leading scholars and curators at Sèvres will focus on furniture, lighting, notable works, and artistic legacies.
Schedule
1:30 pm
Welcome and Introduction from exhibition curator Charlotte Vignon
2 pm
Tamara Préaud (Manufacture nationale de Sèvres)
Dynasties of Sculptors at Sèvres
Viviane Mesqui (Manufacture nationale de Sèvres)
Re-editions Serving Heritage at the Sèvres Manufactory: Sèvres Beehive Vases from 1769 to 2024
3:15 pm Coffee break
3:45 pm
Linda Roth (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum)
Taxile Doat: Sculptor, Decorator, and Studio Potter at Sèvres
Soazig Guilmin (Manufacture nationale de Sèvres)
The Art of Light and Sculpture: A Legacy of the Sèvres Manufactory
Judith Cernogora (Manufacture nationale de Sèvres)
Luxury and Extravagance: Contemporary Furniture in Sèvres Porcelain
5:15 pm Concluding Remarks
5:30 pm Reception
Support for Sèvres Extraordinaire! Sculpture from 1740 until Today is generously provided by the Lee B. Anderson Memorial Foundation, the Majolica International Society, the Belvedere Trust, Michele Beiny Harkins, Giles Ellwood and Philippe Sacerdot, and other donors to Bard Graduate Center.
Speaker Bios
Judith Cernogora studied art history and museology at the École du Louvre and the Sorbonne in Paris. She directed the Musée de Vernon in Normandy for six years, where she curated several exhibitions focusing on Impressionism and contemporary artists. Curator of the Musée national de Céramique de Sèvres since 2018, she oversees contemporary collections, from 1945 to the present day. She curated the Formes Vivantes exhibition in 2022–23, which explored the relationship between ceramics and the living world, from the Renaissance to the present day.
Linda H. Roth is the Charles C. and Eleanor Lamont Cunningham Curator of European Decorative Arts at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. Roth holds a BA from Bowdoin College and an MA from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. At the Wadsworth Atheneum, she organized several exhibitions and gallery installations with particular focus on the collector J. Pierpont Morgan. Her scholarship and publications focus on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Sèvres porcelain, Pierpont Morgan’s London house, and the French ceramist Taxile Doat.
Viviane Mesqui began her career in 2016 as a curator at the Musée des beaux-arts d’Orléans, where she was responsible for the exhibition De Vouet à Boucher: au cœur de la collection Motais de Narbonne. Since 2018, she has been curator of eighteenth-century European porcelain, earthenware, and glass at the Musée national de Céramique de Sèvres. She organized the exhibition A Table! Le repas, tout un art in 2021 and oversaw the new presentation of the French porcelain collection in 2022. She is also a regular lecturer at the École du Louvre.
Tamara Préaud, former archivist of the Sèvres Manufactory for over forty years, is a specialist on French porcelain and has published widely on the subject. Her works include La porcelaine de Vincennes (1991), The Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory: Alexandre Brongniart and the triumph of art and industry, 1800–1847 (1997), and La Manufacture des Lumières: la sculpture à Sèvres de Louis XV à la Révolution (2015).
Soazig Guilmin has been head of the registrar’s department (Service du Récolement et du Mouvement des Oeuvres) at Sèvres, Manufacture et Musée Nationaux, since 2010. She holds a post-graduate diploma from the École du Louvre (a school specializing in teaching art history), where her master’s dissertation focused on the designers and French ceramic manufacturers from 1950 to the present day. She regularly publishes on objects in the rich collections of the Sèvres Manufactory and Museum.
Linda H. Roth is the Charles C. and Eleanor Lamont Cunningham Curator of European Decorative Arts at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. Roth holds a BA from Bowdoin College and an MA from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. At the Wadsworth Atheneum, she organized several exhibitions and gallery installations with particular focus on the collector J. Pierpont Morgan. Her scholarship and publications focus on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Sèvres porcelain, Pierpont Morgan’s London house, and the French ceramist Taxile Doat.
Viviane Mesqui began her career in 2016 as a curator at the Musée des beaux-arts d’Orléans, where she was responsible for the exhibition De Vouet à Boucher: au cœur de la collection Motais de Narbonne. Since 2018, she has been curator of eighteenth-century European porcelain, earthenware, and glass at the Musée national de Céramique de Sèvres. She organized the exhibition A Table! Le repas, tout un art in 2021 and oversaw the new presentation of the French porcelain collection in 2022. She is also a regular lecturer at the École du Louvre.
Tamara Préaud, former archivist of the Sèvres Manufactory for over forty years, is a specialist on French porcelain and has published widely on the subject. Her works include La porcelaine de Vincennes (1991), The Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory: Alexandre Brongniart and the triumph of art and industry, 1800–1847 (1997), and La Manufacture des Lumières: la sculpture à Sèvres de Louis XV à la Révolution (2015).
Soazig Guilmin has been head of the registrar’s department (Service du Récolement et du Mouvement des Oeuvres) at Sèvres, Manufacture et Musée Nationaux, since 2010. She holds a post-graduate diploma from the École du Louvre (a school specializing in teaching art history), where her master’s dissertation focused on the designers and French ceramic manufacturers from 1950 to the present day. She regularly publishes on objects in the rich collections of the Sèvres Manufactory and Museum.
