Event Details

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Barbier-Mueller Museum, the late Michel Butor selected 100 masterpieces, some of them masterpieces, from the Museum's collections. Inspired by these receptacles of provenance, epochs, cultures and diverse materials, he wrote a poem for each of them after having first classified them by "rays" according to the role that their forms whispered to him. From the great civilizations of Antiquity, from major cultures in Africa, Oceania, the Americas and, to a lesser extent, from Asia, these receptacles will rub shoulders with contemporary Western vases, chosen by Michel Butor. Each piece will reflect the aesthetic criteria predominant in the culture from which it emerged, and will reveal information about the ritual or ceremonial context in which its use took place.