Caen, France 24 May 2024
The city of Caen will welcome the collections of the Fondation Gandur pour l'Art
Jean Claude Gandur announces choosing the city of Caen to make accessible and visible to all the artworks he collected, which now form the World-Class collections that the Fondation aspires to preserve and showcase.
The future museum, a beacon of cross-generational interactions, will serve as a hub for diverse public engagement. It will be a space where people of all ages and backgrounds can meet, learn, and share through the five main fields present in the collections held by the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art: Archaeology from the Mediterranean basin, post-war fine art (European school), decorative arts, ethnology, and African contemporary art and of the diaspora.
"Our future museum will provide a modern, approachable and environment-friendly space designed to gather people from all generations and backgrounds. With art as a drive for inclusivity, openness and the promotion of cultural diversity, this place will offer significant artistic contribution and compelling opportunities for growth and integration for children, teenagers and young adults from all social environments." – Jean Claude Gandur.
Known for its authenticity, liveliness and culture, the city of Caen convenes values of hospitality, education, multiculturalism and inclusivity, which are also dear to the Fondation Gandur pour l'Art. In osmosis with this local cultural context and its nearby environment, the Fondation will develop a new and complementary offer to the cultural sites already active in the city. With a people-first approach, this place will gather antique and modern worlds, from the age of the pharaohs in the fourth millennium B.C. to the present day, with four core missions: to welcome and share, to research and publish, to educate, and to connect.
The Fondation in numbers
Since 2010, the Fondation Gandur pour l'Art has received and safeguarded 3,865 artworks or objects, loaned or exhibited 1,911 artworks, co-curated or co-organised 30 exhibitions, recorded, documented, and shared 2,440 artworks on its website, awarded 62 grants to students, and supported 67 research and academic projects for heritage preservation.
In addition, the Fondation has secured five long-term loans with renowned art institutions: the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, the Musées de Chaumont, the Musée des beaux-arts de Dijon, the Réunion des Musées Métropolitains de Rouen Normandie, and the Houston Museum of Natural Science.
Acknowledgement
The Fondation Gandur pour l'Art is grateful to the Swiss cultural engineering practice Thematis and the cities of Annecy, Arles, Bordeaux, Caen, Fessenheim, Rouen, and Strasbourg for their applications.
PRESS RELEASE
