The museum is closed from 12. 1. 2015 due to an intensive renovation of the constructing. It did so as a consequence of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement , a social and aesthetic movement which arose out of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society founded in 1888, though its roots date from the 1850s and the aesthetics of the art critic John Ruskin (1819-1900).
In 2000, Montreal patrons Liliane and David M. Stewart gave the Museum a collection of 5,000 works produced by the most celebrated designers of the 20th century, notably Alvar Aalto, Joe Colombo, Charles and Ray Eames, Frank Gehry, Arne Jacobsen, Gaetano Pesce, Gio Ponti, Marcel Wanders, Gerrit Rietveld and Frank Lloyd Wright.
It was years before I dared pick up one other brush, and decades later I nonetheless concern the label decorative”… simply as we speak I spent time in a gallery trying by way of someone’s portfolio, and the curator stated dismissively, Oh, those are solely decorative works” – in different words, not even value taking a look at.
Different highlights embrace excellent examples of plastic artwork , like blown- and pressed-glass vessels, created by the New England Glass Firm, the Dorflinger Works, and Tiffany Studios; valuable furnishings courting as much as 1820; a range of ceramic and silver objects from the late nineteenth century, including work designed by Paul Revere.
This initial assortment, which additionally comprised objects confiscated from émigré aristocrats, was additional enriched by objects acquired through Revolutionary and imperial conquests, and by distinctive purchases such as the shield and helmet of Charles IX. When Dominique-Vivant Denon became director of the museum in 1802, the ornamental arts assortment was administered by the Department of Antiquities (headed by Ennio Quirino Visconti, succeeded at his dying in 1818 by the Comte de Clarac).