 Hello and welcome. My name is Julia Seaman and I am Assistant Curator of Drawings, Prints and Graphic Design at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. I'm thrilled to welcome you to our Enid and Lester Morris historic design lecture with over 215,000 design objects spanning 30 centuries. The Cooper Hewitt collection is a vital resource for design scholarship in the United States and throughout the world. Thanks to the tremendous generosity of our longtime friends and advocates, Dinny and Lester Morris, we invite historians, scholars, educators, and designers to engage with Cooper Hewitt's collection and help us grow our understanding of design. For our 19th program in the series, we are excited to have Dr. Benedikt Gaddi take us through the intersecting histories of two notable drawing collections, Cooper Hewitt's and that of the Musee de Sartre Artif in Paris. Both were founded as teaching museums, Cooper Hewitt modeled after its Parisian counterpart. And importantly, both museums viewed drawings as material for study and were meant to inspire new work. They continue to inspire us and invite us to consider the role of drawings in museums today. We're pleased to present this lecture in celebration of Cooper Hewitt's 125th anniversary and the Smithsonian Institution's 175th year. During Benedikt's presentation, we encourage you to use the chat box to engage with your fellow attendees. At the end of the hour, I will open the discussion for questions. You can submit these throughout the lecture through the Q&A box at the bottom panel of your Zoom screen. Closed captioning is available through the CC icon. Today's program is being recorded and you can find it on the Cooper Hewitt YouTube channel later along with other lectures in this series and more. And now I am honored to introduce our speaker, Dr. Benedikt Gaddi is the chief curator of graphic arts at the Musée des Arts de Gratifs in Paris, France. The museum holds an impressive 200,000 drawings spanning the 15th to the 21st centuries. Benedikt previously spent eight years at the Musée du Louvre working on 17th century French drawings and we are so pleased to have her here with us today. Welcome Benedikt. Thank you Julia. I hope everybody can see my screen. No response, I hope. We can. We can. Yeah, thank you Julia. Okay, thank you Julia for this kind presentation. I would also express my gratitude to Mr. and Mrs. Morse for the invitation to contribute to this wonderful series of Morse historic design lecture. I have decided to give a talk on the intersecting histories of the Cooper Hewitt Museum and the Musée des Arts de Gratifs in Paris but why me and why specifically on their drawing collections. Of course it has something to do with the fact that I am currently the drawing curator at the Musée des Arts de Gratifs and have been invited by the Cooper Hewitt for this Morse session during the master drawing week on top of it all but there are also more historic and objective reasons for choosing this topic. The first is the explicit ambition of the Cooper Museum from the very beginning to be the equivalent of the Musée des Arts de Gratifs. You can see on your screen the proposed plan of the Cooper Union Museum for the Art of Decoration published in 1896 just one year before the official opening of the museum. The introduction of this text is an ambiguous quote. The aim of the Cooper Union Museum for the Art of Decoration is to establish in New York City an institution similar to the Musée des Arts de Gratifs of Paris. The second reason is that the drawing collections of the two museums are very very similar to one another. Firstly they are very close in numerical importance the Cooper Hewitt has around 70 000 drawings the Musée des Arts de Gratifs around 200 000 and parts of it are not catalogued. Secondly they both cover a wide time span covering from a period from middle age to the present day and finally they both include drawings for every kind of creation. Of course wall decoration the drawings on the left from now on are preserved in the Cooper Hewitt and those on the right in the Musée des Arts de Gratifs so it would be clearer. So wall decorations, decorative arts, furniture, architecture, landscaping, stained glass, action, but also theater, modes of transportations, jewellery, fantaisie, textiles and even bazaar. One can ask why are these two collections so similar? The history of the two institutions explain this proximity. They follow parallel trajectories with branches crossing and by verdict at different reasons and it is fascinating to observe these two courses but obviously it is impossible to study more than a century and a half in less than one hour so I will concentrate on the foundational period move quickly through the 20th century and conclude at greater length by talking about the current policy. At their foundation both institutions were very different from what they are now. Different because of their vocation, because of their audience and because of their status. The first institution to be created was not the Parisian one but rather the one in New York and it was not a museum but a school. In fact, the School of Design for Women was founded in 1858 and only gained a masculine counterpart the following year. It was then renamed the Cooper Union for the advancement of science and art. The founder was Peter Cooper who is the perfect incarnation of the American dream, the son of Dutch immigrants. He made his fortune in industry and used it for philanthropy. In this case he wanted the school to provide free general instruction to workers for their social and civil advancement. The ambition was patriotic, economic and moral. It seems that Cooper had the idea for a museum that he was not able to see it though. This could only happen four decades later in 1897. Here you see an old photograph of the foundation building which was sent to the Museum to the Museum des Arts Décoratifs, the photo work, which was sent to the Museum des Arts Décoratifs in 1905 and discovered recently by Clementine Cuenet with the annotation Musée next to the fourth floor. The building is still standing in Cooper Square in South Manhattan and still houses the Cooper Union that the museum has since moved. The foundation of the Museum des Arts Décoratifs is like an burst story. It was created in 1864 as part of the Union Central des Beaux-Arts appliqué à l'industrie, central union for fine arts applied to industry. Later called Union Central des Arts Décoratifs, central union for decorative arts. The Union Central also included a library. The founders wanted to create a school for workers and artisans, but it only took form in 1897 as a women's school. This is exactly the same new that the Museum was created in New York. The founders were a group of industrialists, manufacturers and artisans who wanted to develop and maintain what they call quotes, the gist and ancient preeminence of French art industries all over the world. This is a quote of their mission statement. These are not my words. They wanted to be able to face the consequences of the growing competition of London and the effects of free trade and industrialization. Their idea was to mold the taste of both loose producing and loose consuming. Their objective was patriotic and also generous, aesthetic and philosophical. They argued in favor of the unity of arts being fine or decorative. Their aim was also corporatist. They advocated for the recognition of industrial designers. Beginning, they opened the Museum's library in the Place des Vosges, which was the heart of working class Paris at the time. This was long before the gentrification of the Marais. Its first location was at number 15, the Eurobove, then at number 3, the Eurobelue. To accomplish their mission, the Museum and the library were open for free during the day, but also in the evening of the library and on the weekends so that workers could come study outside of work hours. This pastel by Chargentie dated 1902 shows both men and women consulting works in the library. Through the open window, we can see the Queen's pavilion at the north of the Place des Vosges. Gent's choice of electric lighting was aesthetic, of course, but it also served to highlight the originality of the institution's late opening hours. There were also free public talks. There were on drawings, of course, and exhibitions. Among them, let us focus on the exhibition of decorative and ornamental hall master drawings in 1880, which is an historical event in the history of drawings. As far as I know, it is the first exhibition ever dedicated to this subject. The initiative comes from the collector and statement, Philippe de Chendière, more than 700 drawings from private collections were exhibited and published in a catalogue by Charles Ephrissie and Gustave Dreyfus. At the end of the exhibition, a number of pieces were given to the Bodding Museum, especially by Chendière himself, but the majority returned to their private collections. This was the case for five drawings that the museum has just acquired. I can't resist the use to show them to you now. There are five drawings by Pierre-Paul Prudant, the putty at the bottom left, on the same sheet. Four prepared a cradle made for the king of Rome, Napoleon's son. The fifth one on blue paper prepared the toilet service for the Empress Marie-Louis. All five were lent in 1880 by the collector and curator, Bedox Marcille of the Musée des Orléans. The Musée des Arts Décoratifs bought them last November at the auction of one of his descendants and were particularly grateful to the patrons who made that happen, one of whom is linked to Gustave Dreyfus, which is destiny at work. The Union Centrale also organized competitions. On these occasions, the jury systematically insisted on the need to combine good taste with innovation. There is an example on your screen of this competition in 1895. The first four decades, but also very complicated because of the war, changes in political regimes and internal dissensions about the project were in France and the lack of means in space. The ability only came in 1905 when the French state attributed part of the Louvre palace to the institution, still in France. In exchange, the museum's collection was given to the state 15 years later in 1920. So now we are a private association in charge of the public collection, which is unique in France. At the end of the 19th century, the situation at the Couvert Institute was the opposite. The institution was wealthy and managed by an incredibly close-knit family. You can see on the slide part of the family tree and the names of the trustees and officers in the year of the Museum Foundation. In the Couvert son and son-in-law, Edward Couper and Abraham Hewitt occupied the men functions. The ladies of the family played an important role in the woman's art school along with their relatives and friends. The museum project was formed by three Hewitt sisters, Amy for a short period when she married, Sarah and Eleanor with the constant support of their parents. To find out more about this fascinating family, I recommend the forthcoming exhibition at the Couper Hewitt and the extraordinary blog Meet the Hewitts written by Marjorie Mazzinto, whom I would like to thank warmly for all of her help. The Hewitt sisters were used to traveling through Europe each year. It may seem curious that they didn't choose the South Kensington Museum in London to their DNA as their model since they had English ancestry and had before the first and most generally admired Museum of Decorative Arts at that time. But it was to Paris that they chose for inspirations there. In Paris in the 1880s and 1890s they visited both the Place Vogue with the library and its 90,000 drawings and the Palace of Industry near the Champs-Élysées, the letter room in the map, which was a temporary home to the Museum with its drawings gallery, the exhibitions and the presentation of cars and photographs from the institution workshops, as you can see in these perspectives dating to around 1893. Here I would like to make a semantic clarification. The sisters constantly encompass under the name of Musée des Arts Décoratives the diverse entities of the Union Centrale. It is easier to do so but from now on I will do the same and it serves that project in which the Museum and the library were won. The annual reports of the Cooper Institute, the proposed plan of the Cooper Union Museum written by a friend of the students Elizabeth Newtland, the making of a modern Museum which is a retrospective analysis by Eleanor and archives and all photographs all help us to understand the precise links between the new Museum and its Parisian model. The first list of gifts to the Cooper Union Museum published a year before the official opening provides intellectual help on the same level as material gifts. Firstly, the residence of the Musée des Arts Décoratives, M. Georges Berger and the conservator M. Alfred de Champs-Élysées gave access to the documents of the Museum also many valuable facts about it as well as advice for the organization of the Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Décoration. They also presented two charts containing the scheme of classification of the library in the Place Vosges. The list continues, M. de Champs-Élysées in person kindly selected those charts to exemplify the best specimen of decoration of the various periods of French hearts from the Atelier de Moulage. This text reveals that the Musée des Arts Décoratives played a consultative role in three fields. Firstly, the choice and delivery of a collection of plaster casts. Secondly, the organization of the Museum and finally, the creation of a collection of encyclopedics crab books. I'm skipping over the question of the plaster casts which are central to the first Museum of the Cooper Union, as you can see on this photograph, but less so for our question about drawings. Just two words on this matter, though. The archive of the Musée des Arts Décoratives proved first that the Museum project has already begun in 1889, as is clear in Abram Hewitt's letters on the left, and second that the collaboration between the sisters and the directors was very close. On the right page, the head of the cast workshop in Paris chose certain models from the catalogue, took note on those that had already been acquired, and made suggestions in order to respond best to, and here I'm quoting, your new choice Louis XIV. I won't spend too long on the organization of the Museumiser, which is a confusing point because there is a contradiction between what is described, the main criterion is said to be the destination of the works, and what is really chosen in Paris, where collections are organized by material at that time, and even in New York. There, chronology is the main criterion, if we judge by a 1913 floor plan discovered by Elisabeth Kessler, senior PhD on the Coupe Hewitt. I just want to stress that drawings were displayed in the permanent collection galleries in Paris, and in New York, hung on walls, or inserted into what the French called tourniquet, and the Americans swinging wall cases. We can see them by zooming in on old photographs, I'll leave you there. The differences between the two museums come into play in the chronological and geographical limits of the collections. The Musée des Arts Décoratifs made a point of widening its collections to contemporary pieces. For example, this drawing by Gérée Brothers around 1860, and to the Orient and Far East, and the best example is this wonderful miniature on your right, Humay and Humayoun, done in Afghanistan around 1430, and acquired by the Museum in 1887. Another example, just for the visual pleasure of it, six of the 5,000 catagannies Japanese stencils used for dyeing kimonos, acquired by the Musée des Arts Décoratifs around 1900. The Coupe Hewitt also has a beautiful collection of these pieces, but mostly acquired after the Second World War, and there was a subject of an exhibition curated by Julia Simon three years ago. The Hewitt sisters' choices were more focused. They wished to concentrate on historical models, mainly European, and set a chronological limit around 1825. In the making of a modern museum, Eleanor Hewitt justified this decision by arguing that they lacked space, but we can have some doubt about this. Elsewhere, she spoke about the quotes, the prostitutes of the degenerate furniture of the English Gothic revival, and the certain pie, and quotes. This makes her aesthetic feelings quite clear. These limits are valid for the whole collection with one exception, drawings by contemporary artists, both rough and sketched. They were earned in all ways and staircases to inspire student and amateurs. The only name that Eleanor cites are views of history and landscape painters, Frederick Church and Winslow Homer and Robert Bloom. In addition, the chronological criterion was then combined with a distinction between fine and decorative arts. In the choice of the Blasocast and the theoretical reflection on the organization of the museum, the third and most original input from the Parisian Museum for its New York counterpart concerns the library. Starting in the mid-1880s, Alfred de Champau, the librarian, and Jules Massé, its prime donor, decided to render accessible a collection of images organized by them, prints, photographs, pages from books, and press clippings were glued onto sheets of paper, and then inserted into albums organized by them in order to form the so-called Encyclopaedic Collection or Album Massé Collection. You can see here them on two later photographs on the left in Paris and their equivalent in New York on the right. However, a mystery still remains. In the night of Paris, no New York, can we know for sure whether or not drawings were incorporated into these encyclopaedic scrollbooks along with prints and photographs, or if they were in a separate collection of only drawings from the very beginning? In Paris, the 1893 prospectus within mentioned them separately, but an internal memo from the library, which can be dated to the 1920s, specifically references the drawing extracted from the Encyclopaedic Collection, end quote. In New York, Elizabeth Spiesler's plan was to insert drawing into the scrollbook she wrote it. In Paris, the collection of printed images and rolls stayed in this album for the most part, with the drawings being organized first by artists, what you see here on the screen, and then by them. These drawings albums are preserved now in the Graphical Department, which was created by Marie-Noël de Garry in 1974. In New York, the scrollbooks have been disassembled, except for four of them. Mastien Champaud wanted an intuitive and simple system so that readers could find the album for themselves. Academic terms and technical jargon were banished in favor of more familiar terms. Thus, the Numismatics album was labeled cons. Alphabetical order was chosen, with a chart displayed at the entrance to the library. The chart used at the Cooper Union on the right was almost identical to that used in Paris, as he is noted in the legend below, which I have highlighted in red. The system's principal objective was adopted to their intended audience of students, artisans, and workers. This is where they were the most original. They thought of the symbolic obstacles that could prevent someone from going into a museum. For example, they wanted the entrance to be a welcoming working place, quote, in contrast to the great hall of most museums, end quote. Thanks to the floor plan, I think we can recognize the entrance, the red arrow, in the photograph on the right. The visitors took on board certain innovation from the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, like allowing visitors to measure, copy, and even trace models. Obviously, they were conscious of the risk of damaging the works, but they load it in order to make possible the verse of what they call an artistic tradition in the United States. They went even further in the Parisian counterparts. Thought about labels, but it's another story. They conceived of a way of making an intimate connection between the works on showing the galleries, the encyclopedic scrapbooks, and the books in the library. This same photograph shows a mix of works of art, working desk, and encyclopedic scrapbooks and shelves. Unfortunately, we can't read the scrapbook title and say whether or not that topic was the same as the objects shown in the display case. In this case, it was jewelry. Where the drawings collection of these two decorative art museums assembled. The first thing that jumps out at us is the overwhelming predominance of gifts for the enrichment of the collections. When there is a purchase, it is always thanks to preceding financial gifts, which for museum in France, it's sufficiently rare to be noted. Of course, for images in order to enrich the encyclopedic collections were made in Paris in 1886, in the Revue des Arts Décoratifs, and in New York by Besslin, 10 years later. The first list of donations to the Cooper Union Museum reveals the importance of drawing alongside textile. Drawings occupy the first entry and are scattered throughout the list. The names of these original drawings are rarely mentioned. Alongside old master drawings are technical drawings, for monograms, coat of arms, etc. We can note that the same combination of so called artistic and technical drawings is also to be found at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. The first item is the most precise. Mrs. Lloyd S. Bryce, who was the sister's cousin, if you remember the family tree, gave, quote, an important collection of 22 watercolors in eight old paintings from various interiors of the Palace of Fontainebleau, Paris, by Frederick Marshall. End quote. Let's keep over the fact that Fontainebleau is apparently situated in Paris and focus on the drawings. On the left here is a partial depiction of the Gallery of France's the first. It is interesting to note that Marshall did not limit himself to the original decor by Rousseau and Primaticio, but also copied the contemporary editions from the 1860s, such as this section by Jean-Aleau. The Cooper-Yewitt collections proved that Marshall was interested in the various stages of the core of Fontainebleau in the same way he would be in Foyston Declaration. In the center here, you can see a drawing of the council chamber of Louis XV. They created with blue and pink chemies painted by Calvon Lou and Jean-Baptiste Pierre at the beginning of the 1750s and far right, a part of this Chinese room. The annual reports say that all of Marshall's watercolors are of interiors at Fontainebleau, but the clever study proves that the painter depicted more varied interiors than just of fumes of Fontainebleau. For example, this watercolour I'm showing you here appears the annotation of in red Hôtel de Cluny, Paris. The Hôtel de Cluny is a private mention in the Latin Quarter in Paris dating to the 15th century. In the 1880s, when Marshall was copying these interiors, it had already been turned into a museum, but it was a museum of Middle Ages, which may seem surprising when looking at the motifs represented here, on what is the 17th century ceiling. It is in fact one of the most famous ceilings in Paris that of the bath in the Hôtel Lombair painted by a stagelessure in 1652-1655. It was maybe the most delicate and poetic of interior decors of the 17th century before being destroyed in the fall in 2013. It is known thanks to a series of 18th century engravings here at the right and also thanks to photographs taken before the fire. Here you can see a picture that I was able to take personally in March 2009 taken purely for memory. I'm so sorry for the definition. I could never have imagined that what I was looking at would disappear shortly thereafter. But why has Marshall written Hôtel de Cluny at the bottom of the watercolour and not Hôtel Lombair? Because he did not work directly from the original ceiling at Hôtel Lombair, which was the private residence of Prince Tartu Wieski at that time, but rather from a copy that was displayed at the Musée de Cluny. This copy still exists. It was made by Savignan Petit, 30 years earlier in 1851 at the request of the French government at a time when the Hôtel Lombair was treated with destruction. It was exhibited at the Musée de Cluny until 1927 before being put into storage. It will soon undergo a remission though after restoration when it will be exhibited at the Musée du Grand siècle, which is due to open in 2026. Marshall watercolour is thus a testament to the attraction of Le Sœur's painting even through its copy at Cluny, and it heightens our sensibility to the fragility of works of heart that we should never forget both in and out of museums. Each stoner brought a personal touch to this collection of drawing through their gifts. Mithissuit, for example, gave, quote, a collection of original 18th century drawings by the best French designers, end quote. Here you see three of these drawings that have remained anonymous. Capes, mirrors, and snuff boxes, all be a witness of Mithissuit's double passion, decorative art, and the 18th century from France. Obviously, the family visits to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs must have reinforced their stations and influence her daughters far more than the English port of the heritage. At the same time, Mary Purely, the forthcoming first curator of the museum, gave a series of drawings which included two categories. The first were nude figures in different media support and from different periods. The second was a collection of projects for the non-tabric manufacturer Petitierre, end quote, done during the French Revolution. Here is just a small selection. It was precisely the same year, 1896, that Henri Barbé-Dejouis gave a collection of 85 drawings for Troyes-de-Jouis, which is very similar to Troyes-de-Nantes, to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. Barbé-de-Jouis was a descendant of the director of the factory. Today, he is better known for the role he played in protecting the collection of the Louvre when he was a curator from the fires set during the Paris commune in 1871, and we are all in debt to him for that. Some donors like Miss Purely or Barbé-de-Jouis gave coherent collections of drawings, while others, in Paris at least, constantly gave pieces that had been found on the art market. The most fascinating instance of this is Jules Massier. It is impossible to count just how many drawings he gave, so numerous are they, and often given in bundlers in a relatively informal way. Just between June 1818, the date of the exhibition was talked about, and December 1882, he gave 428 drawings. Among these are sheets of varying quality meant to be inserted into the entire cyclopedic albums, and well as smart gifts intended to complement the exercise's existing collections. For example, the two carrobino albertes drawings on the right are studies for sealing bearing the Fournésie family coat of arms intended as pendants to a drawing given by Emile Perre in 1905. I have seen that the two museums in Paris and New York mostly enrich their collections through gifts and acquisition, often financed by patrons. However, there are a few significant differences. Gifts and acquisitions were frequent in Paris promoted by a very active art market, a large number of collectors of drawings, and the closeness of the museum to contemporary creators and industries. At the Cooper Union Museum, there were less common, but two large entries in its very first year were truly spectacular. The first was the collection of Giovanni Ciancastelli, an artist, curator of the Borghese collection, and the collector himself. Thanks to help from the museum's patron, as he'd by magic said Eleonore, over 3600 drawings entered the collection in 1901. Eleonore reported that the Ciancastelli collection, quote, could not pass the custom house, end quote, because the United States tariff of the time specified mechanical drawings, but not artistic original drawings. These Ciancastelli drawings were joined in 1938 by a second part of the collection for a total of 12,000 drawings and prints. This double acquisition gave a very Italian flavor to the Cooper Union drawings collection, as opposed to that of the Musée des Arts Décoratives. One can wonder, though, if a visitor was so both museums at the beginning of the 20th century could have noticed such a difference. The 1913 pro plan of the Cooper Union Museum suggests that these drawings were never or rarely exhibited, as opposed to the French drawings from the De Plume collection that took pride of place. In fact, I was not able to find any mention of Ciancastelli's drawings, but there are at least four locations for the Clue drawings. The Clue collection was the second important collection of drawings acquired during the time of the Yearwood Sisters. Just over a year ago, Julia Simon gave a fascinating talk on the acquisition of these 450 drawings acquired in 1911, thanks to the strong bonds made between him and the sisters and finance by a call for the nation. It is principally made up of 18th century French drawings, but not only. Tryingly, the acquisition of this collection in one block likened New York to its French counterparts, whose collection had been formed more slowly. It is no surprise as the Clue acquired drawings at the same places, the Merard and Detail Auction, for example, and had similar taste as the founders of the Union Central. It means that we can play a game of mirrors with the two collections, starting with the Renaissance works in each architectural drawings by Jacques-Andreux-Ducersault on wallpaper here on your screen. Next, come designs for wood paneling for major decorative schemes. For example, the bedroom for the Prince de Rouen in the Hôtel de Soubise by Jean-Marbeau Franc is mirrored here by two studies by Nicolas Pinot for Peter the Great's or Cabinet in Peter Hall. This continues with ornament drawings by lesser known or some famous draftmen, too, of the 18th century. Some connections have only come to light recently, such as letters by Égile-Marie Oppenold acquired from the Clue here, the one on the left, which served as the basis for the attribution of two anonymous letters in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs collection to the same artists independently by two specialists on Oppenold, Jean-François Bédard and Peter Ferring. Here you can see the newly attributed drawing for the letter B, and here the one for an ampersand. Beyond these foundational collections, similar parallels could be pointed out for the Arneau and the Ardeaux periods and even some interior designs from the 1950s. Two remarks before concluding on the current policy. First, from the beginning and especially during the 20th century, donations by the artists and artisans themselves, or by their hair, have been a major source of enrichment for the collections. Sometimes these artists and artisans gave their entire graphic work probably motivated by their having frequented the schools and library of the two institutions. In the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, it is the main method of acquisition. Second remark, women occupy a particularly important place in this history. For New York, we have seen the place of the women art school and the role of the human sisters and their relatives and friends in the first decades of the museum existence. The Musée des Arts Décoratifs also had a few patronesses forming a committee who, in 1897, found in the École du Comité des Dames, the Ladies' Committee School, another instance of mirroring between the institution. I have chosen to show you drawings by two illustrators in order to exemplify these two remarks. The first chronological link is Elisabeth Branlie, who exhibited at the Salon des Humoristes and was published in many satirical magazines and the Gazette du Bouton. After her marriage to the architect Paul Tourneau, she mostly devoted herself to painting large-scale decorative frescoes. Her enterprise studio collection was given to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in two lots by her daughter following her express wishes, making up over 2,000 drawings that are currently being inventoried and studied. It is amusing to compare these drawings of Elisabeth Branlie with those by Christina Marlman, who also drew for press publications, especially the New Yorker. She gave her drawings to the Coupe Eau Huit in 1947, a donation that was added to after her death by her husband. These collections are just two among many others and here I'm showing a data visualization of the collections in the drawing department of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs that we did recently. Circles of the wring size representing the relative numerical importance of the collections are arranged along a timeline. The smallest circle on the far left represents 24 drawings by the cabinet maker André-Charles Boule and his studio, while the biggest one at the bottom in the middle represents 20,000 drawings from the Fouquet jewelry brand. So what is the situation today? On both sides of the Atlantic, the collections of these decorative art museums have lost their function as training tools to become works of heritage. The timelines were different, but the result is the same. The collections of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris were nationalized in 1920, as I have said, and the Coupe Union transferred the museum's collections to the Smithsonian Institution in 1967. The creative context has also changed. When these institutions were founded, new styles, that is the copying and reinvention of historic styles, predominated the thirst for images that were conscious by direct access to the collections during the 20th century finds other sources in the age of internet. Faced with these immense, fascinating, and only partially inventory collections, what are the priorities today? Given the vastness of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs collection, who decided with Olivier Gabet, the director of the Musée, that the acquisition policy would be very targeted. It now favors major heritage works, as we have seen with the drawings by Perdon, and drawings that are related to other works already in the museum. For example, this drawing by Nicolas Lancret was recently acquired because it is preparatory to a panel of the Hotel Péran de Mouras, as Axel Mouligny has established. This is the point that is common with the Coupe-Hueward policy. Here on the left is an acquisition from 2019, a drawing by Stradanus, that art is working at the Medici court, which completes the corpus of more than 300 drawings that entered the Coupe-Hueward with the Piancastle collection. It is a very finished drawing, which is the result of the long-searching process through sketches, sketches that already belongs to the museum. And for more on this, I refer you to the very fine catalogue entry online that Julia Simon wrote for this acquisition. The Musée des Arts Décoratifs also continues to acquire artist collections with her representative of the vitality of creation in the sphere of decorative arts. Thus, Laurent de Comine generously gave drawings he did for a rug being woven at the Goblin's manufactory, but also for cairfrey wallpapers and haveland porcelain and many others. Our first mission is to make the collection known and to open them to visitors with maximum transparency. This is why we organized in 2020 a large exhibition of 500 drawings presented both in the exhibition rooms and the permanent galleries. That was not the best year to have been seen by the widest audience, but it remains as a film on the web and a catalogue. We are also very attentive to the more specific audience of students, researchers and young professionals whom these collections, still to be catalogue and restored, are an uncharted terrain in which they can learn and work. And it is on these images filled with the passion of young students, curators and conservators in training that I would like to close this conference and take some questions. Thank you. Thank you so much, Benedict, for that very insightful presentation. I'm excited to open up our Zoom session now to questions and I'll remind the audience that you can continue to add questions to the Q&A box on your screen, and we'll get to as many of them as possible in the time remaining. Thank you so much, Dr. Gaddy. I want to begin with actually a sort of simple question, which may have a more complex answer, which comes from the audience and it asks you what you were surprised by in studying the connection between the two institutions if you learned something that captured your attention in a new way. And I'll add to that question, my own question, which is whether you encountered any experiences in which the Parisian Museum was inspired by what they learned in New York and that communication. So not just Paris to New York, but also New York to Paris. Okay, thank you, Julia, for these questions. I must confess that I discovered for me everything was new and I was very surprised by this first sentence of the introduction of the proposed plan by this land. So that means clearly that the Cooper Union Museum was inspired by the Parisian one. I must say that the thing that most struck me is as a reflection that it's out of the field of drawings, the reflections from the U.S. sisters that Eleanor just wrote on her making a modern museum for what I told the symbolic obstacles for museum and more of everything her reflection on the labels. Because what she wants was to have a museum in which visitors would be able to change place of the objects and do comparison and just put them on the light and then change the places. And so she said if we want to do that we have to have them labeled because if not, how will we do? And then she made a reflection on labels and she said it's absolutely fascinating because it's really the sources of our educational department. She says, okay, we do have to do some labels, but which kind of information do we have to give to the audience? And sometimes people don't know when is the 15th century. So we have to explain it's from 1400 to 1500. And then you say 80, but if we explain that it's anodominal it will be too long. So okay, we can manage with this not understood. And so she does a lot of comments on that. And I think it's very inspiring and very, I don't know if the education department knows that page, but it's not something I've ever paid much attention to in looking in that history, but you're right, it's still these are the questions that every day we grapple with and trying to understand what information is the information that our audience wants, that they know they want, that they don't know they want and how to do that. And she said, yeah, and she said that we have also to take their attention by a detail to catch their attention by explaining, for example, I don't know the hand or something, just to cut their attention. And then this is very funny and not current at all. She said at the end of the label, we can put a bibliographical reference so that students don't have to go to the library, which is a real relief for them and the librarian, let's find that. Yeah, the idea of putting a bibliographical reference at the end of a label, of course, we would never do it now. But it does reinforce the idea of the collection as being a launching pad for learning and education, which it always was in our two museums. I would note about the display of the Pian Castelli collection. I do think that some of the drawings were on view, but individually prized the way the French drawings were, the French drawing collection, as it came from the Declue, particularly in 1911, was a much fancier collection. Important artists, bigger, more refined drawings, and they were put on view in frames on the wall and very celebrated. The Pian Castelli drawings are mostly working drawings, many unattributed, small and preparatory sketches, also some architectural drawings. These were, I think, available in those swinging frames. Some of those were there. Also, many of those drawings have pinholes. Do you have pinholes in any of your drawings? Yeah, I'm sure you're right. I think the Pian Castelli collection, as it was not so fantastic drawing, they were in the swinging wall cases, which were organized by theme. So it's like a mirror. Exactly the same. I was really interested to see that. I love the idea in a way of going to a museum and being able to flip through drawings like that at your leisure, which brings me to another sort of easier question, perhaps from an audience member about accessibility online, and how much of your collection can we find online now? Yeah. Okay, it's a hard question because... It's hard for us to... No, no, you're right. We are just changing both our bases and our policy. And now they're not, I think you can find online 15% of the collection, but the most interesting part, I must confess. But I think we will change our policy and put online to some entries that don't have photographs, because until now the museum policy is not to share entries when they're not photographs. So it's interesting for communication, but for research, I think it's really a limit. So maybe we will change that. I think we will change that, but just... Some portion is online. It's really interesting in part because we have a bit of an opposite situation where we have many photos available online, but because we are switching from hard copy paper cataloging to digital cataloging, and as you mentioned, and I think our audience knows, Cooper Hewitt's collection of works on paper, especially the drawings, is one of the largest in the country. It's the very large collection. And so we're moving from hard paper cataloging to digital cataloging to make our collection searchable online. So in many cases, we have an opposite situation where there are photos online, but there's no catalog information yet available so that people can find it, although there is a Smithsonian collections website where there's some portion of our collection, yes, online. Another question that we had from the audience has to do with the public nature of the Museum de Sartre Gratif. So Cooper Hewitt's collection, of course, is part of the Smithsonian under the umbrella of this federal museum system. When did... I heard you mention the date, but when did the Museum de Sartre Gratif become public, and what were the circumstances around that? Yeah, so the museum was at first... it is still an association, but at first it was... the initiative was independent of the state, the state approved, but doesn't help. After these four decades, very complicated where they couldn't find a place, a permanent place for the museum, etc., the state gave the attribution of parts of the Louvre Palace, which is the pavilion of Marseille and the Royal Wing. Okay, maybe from New York, it's a little so, but one part of... one wing of the Louvre Palace. It was... the Museum and Library opens in 1905, and they signed a convention, a contract with the state that said if the Union Centrale, the Museum and the Library, still stay here, you will give the collection to the state. So the official attribution of the Louvre Palace was in 1905, and in 1920, the collection became national ones, public ones. It was always open to the public, but now it's nationalized. So now this is always an association, a private association with a Board of Trustees, which is not frequent in France, but managing public collections, national collections, which is quite strange. So now part of this... the main part of the salaries and the the building is due to the state, but the acquisition, the exhibition, and the restorations are on the budget of the association. So it's why we have a way of doing things more similar to American ones than to French ones. Okay, thank you. And another question that we have that I thought was very interesting relates to the connection of Cooper Hewitt to the Parsons New School Master's Program in the history of design and curatorial studies. So we have this graduate program associated with Cooper Hewitt, where students can come and work in the departments and learn about design history as well as being a curator and other roles within the museum community. Do you, at the Musee d'Arthur de Grand Thief, also have a similar sort of educational program associated with the museum? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have a lot of educational programs. And for the research or university programs, we have lots of links with the École Pratique des Auditudes, who has a specific decorative arts department now by Roséla Fressard, who did her master degree on this history of the Union centrale des arts decoratives. So the links are very profound. And also with Sorbonne University, of course. And sometimes we also receive seminars from the Parsons school in Paris. I have a question that is for me, I think, about the Declu collection. So the group of approximately 450 drawings that came to Cooper Hewitt in 1911. For that collection, I would be happy to speak more about it. But in fact, I'm going to just plug a lecture that's online already from last year, Master Drawings New York, which you can find online at Drawing America, that talks more about the history of that purchase. But just the brief overview is that the collection was acquired en masse from a collector in Seuve in France, who was a connection of the Hewitt sisters. And they worked over many years to try to negotiate that acquisition. And it was a major coup for the museum and foundational for our French drawings collection. So for more on that, there are other resources out there. I have a little... Oh, go ahead, Benedique. Yeah, just the lecture online is fantastic and very useful to prepare this lecture. The history is fascinating about the way that the Hewitt sisters went looking for the objects that they knew they wanted for the museum, which is one point that you made that they were quite clear about their tastes and what they desired. I have a little bit of... Oh, no, here's a good one. So someone has asked whether the data visualization that you made that showed the different individual collections for specific artists, how that different viewpoint of seeing the data visualization, how that affected or if it affected how you're collecting now, did seeing the graph where you could see all of the great number of, I think, 19th century designs, the 20,000 versus very small monographic collections, whether the information that you got from looking at the data in this way affected how you approach acquisitions after the fact. Okay. I would respond in two times. I think it doesn't change a lot our acquisition policy because we have a very targeted acquisition, financial acquisition policy, and we receive gifts, but they are contemporary generally or sometimes gifts that come to add to complement the collection. But the data visualization doesn't help too much on that. But the reason for we did that, it was to understand ourselves, the composition of the collection, but also to give ideas of subjects for the students, for PhD students. And in this sense, very different, it helps a lot. And some of them have decided to work on a and a copies of drawings, looking at the visualization in the exhibition. So it's very I found it first. I mean, it's very exciting. And I would love to be able to see a similar sort of graphic for our collection too. I have a specific question that comes out of our work today in drawings, prints and graphic design at Cooper Hewitt and with our colleagues in other departments. And that has to do with the connection between how we collect drawings, design drawings for other projects that fall into other departments in the museum, decorative arts, textiles. And one of the questions that we deal with much more frequently in recent years has to do with the fact that while we love to buy drawings related to projects as you've shown, in many cases contemporary makers are working in a digital format and using computers to work out the processes of their designs. Do you have a policy or even a personal feeling or an institutional approach towards how you move from works on paper as the place where where artists and designers do their work to a more digital format? Do you collect digital objects at the museum? It's more or less the same response that the one on the drawings online, because we have collected some of the digital designs. But it's not, it was very specific when an artist was invited to do a project and offers a digital part of his work. But we have to build a real policy on this, which is not clear. Until now, we, in the drawing department, we only collect drawings on paper. And as we have so many things to do to have them inventoried and restored, this is our priority. But it's a good question, a real important question. We will discover together, I think, how this turns out in the next few years. We have a digital, new emerging digital department at Cooper Hewitt that is working this out with collecting objects or designs that are born digitally. But we do sometimes also collect works on paper related to digital designs. So it's new territory and something we're working out. A final question for you, and this one is a bit of an easy, gentle conclusion for us today, which comes from Heather McDonald. And she asks, she's asking both of us, but I'm going to ask you, can you dream of any future collaborative projects between the Musee des Artes Artif and Cooper Hewitt? Oh, yes, there's so many parallels to build, of course. What do you think? For me, particularly exciting, because I know our works on paper collection, and particularly having spent a lot of time in the French drawings and Italian drawings, seeing how closely connected our collections are in those areas. I think there's a lot of opportunity to learn more by pulling things together there. And so that, I think the answer, Heather, is yes, it's lovely. But how to do it? Not exactly sure. With that, unless there's anything else, Benadique, that you'd like to add, or any last minute questions anyone wants to throw at us, I think we'll wrap it up. So I want to just quickly bring to an end our program. And thank you again, Benadique, for sharing your scholarship and your hard work on both of our collections. And to thank our audiences, both in France and the United States and everywhere else, for joining us here today. Thank you. Thank you. Goodbye.