Opus IX: Abode of Chaos / Demeure du Chaos 1999-2013

Célèbre panneau publicitaire devant
le restaurant Paul Bocuse
Famous billboard in front of
Paul Bocuse flagship restaurant
In 1999, thierry Ehrmann codified
the Musée l’Organ (aka, Organ
Museum) as an innovative vision:
“the Artwork Museum” in which
he defined the museum as a work
of art in itself based on a building
structure that is intrinsically an
open­air monumental work of art,
made up, in this case, of 4,500 artworks,
visible as a modern­era cathedral.
This revolutionary idea will notably
apply with the Organ Museum
which manages the ERP
(Establishment Receiving Public)
of the Abode of Chaos (Demeure
du Chaos), whose visitor stats
(120,000 per year) make it the
most frequented private Museum
in the Rhône­Alpes sector (according
to Le Progrès Culture). In addition,
the international media
reaction largely confirmed the theories
codified in 1999.
In fact, the museums and public
collections of our era are a relatively
recent invention dating
back to the 18th Century and
may be considered the fruit of
the Enlightenment Philosophers.
The first public museum opened
in 1694 in Besançon, France.
Elsewhere in the country, it was
the Revolution that set up the first
museum to permit citizens to see
the organe museum or
malrauX’s ImagInary
museum
492 493
artworks of Royal collections or
those that were confiscated from
nobles and religious congregations.
Thereafter, the museum, the
official place to exhibit art, has occupied
a central place in urban life.
In Paris, the Louvre was selected
to become a museum.
The objective of a museum, a public
institution at the beginning, is
to give everyone access to the cultural
heritage of the Nation, the
idea of beauty and knowledge, via
a selection of objects. The museum
shows art but also science, techniques,
history, and all the new
disciplines that generate progress
and modernity.
Until the early 19th Century, museums
were open only to apprentice
artists who came to imitate
the recognised works. Although after
1880 they also began to adopt
an educational mission, openness
to a wider audience was very slow
and was accepted with great reluctance
by a profession that entertained
an elitist vision of its
function.
The more recently established museums
were set up for reasons related
to scientific and artistic
town/country planning objectives
as well as to economic and political
considerations.
Throughout the 1990s, for example,
a whole generation of industrialists
wishing to leave a lasting
impression on their respective
countries began to build a large
number of Contemporary art museums,
especially in northern
Europe, Germany, northern Italy
and China. In fact, during the first
decade of the new millennium,
more museums and Contemporary
Art Centres were built than during
the course of the entire 20th
Century (source: Artprice).
The Organ Museum, with several
sociologists specialized in the art
market, published a long study on
the evolution of museums towards
a “free­of­charge” model worldwide
(Editions Musée l’Organ). In
2001, the Organ Museum was a
precursor by being the first French
Contemporary art museum to be
registered on France’s Commercial
Registers of Companies.
This revolution of the museum
model has been spearheaded by
the Louvre, which now markets its
brand to the Gulf countries.
Summarizing his approach,
Thierry Ehrmann, founder of
the Organ Museum, has said
"The specifications of the Organ
Museum, which have guided us
since 1999, are perfectly coherent
with André Malraux’s “Imaginary
Museum”. This development is a
virtuous circle: content diffusion
on the Internet creates the desire
to deepen knowledge, satisfy curiosity
and, naturally, to physically
visit different museums around
the world."
The last word of this presentation
of the museum in the world
in 2012 by the Organ Museum belongs
to André Malraux in his
The Imaginary Museum (1947) in
which he analysed the museum
phenomenon: "The role of museums
in our relationship with art
is so great that we can hardly imagine
life without them... and yet
they have only been with us for
less than two centuries. The 19th
Century lived with them and we
still live with them... and we forget
that they imposed on visitors
an entirely new relationship with
art. They helped to deliver from
their function the artworks they
brought together."
Earlier in The Imaginary Museum,
this extraordinary visionary says
"the 21st Century museum will be
the unique place for all the arts,
where all cultures, all generations
and all social strata will converge."
Algorithme