GENEVA.- For its second major “carte blanche” exhibition, The Museum of Arts & History has enlisted leading French curator Jean-Hubert Martin to breathe new life into the museum’s permanent collection. Spanning over 3,550 m2 across two floors, the playful display features some 600 pieces, including loans from other Swiss institutions. Titled Draw Your Own Conclusion, the exhibition resists traditional display methods which favour chronology and didactic learning experiences. Instead, the show prioritises a sense of play and curiosity, orchestrating an unlikely dialogue between Naqada II pottery from Ancient Egypt, modern Kabuki Japanese prints and 19th-century Swiss painting.

Since the second half of the 19th-century, museum conservation and display techniques have become increasingly sophisticated, leading to considerable advancements but often neglecting principles of discovery and play. Departing from this observation, Martin spent almost two years studying MAH’s permanent collection to select items based on analogical correspondences such as colours, shapes, and proportions rather than pre-existing geographical and historical narratives. The resulting display is a theatre of unexpected encounters in which visitors are left to their own devices. As such, the exhibition celebrates the speculative nature of knowledge, rejecting the assumption that art is a code that needs cracking and, instead, encouraging instinctive interpretation as ways to understand the world.

Draw Your Own Conclusion is conceived as a series of analogical sequences. On the ground floor, Swiss painter François Diday’s 1867 landscape Cascade of Giessbach, which features the dramatic waterfalls of the same name, is in conversation with fellow Swiss artist Jacques-Laurent Agasse’s 1837 La Fontaine Personnifiée, which depicts a fantastical nymph inspired by English romanticism. Drawing on the mythical story of the birth of Venus, this pairing is complemented by Kabuki Japanese prints of the same period. Meanwhile, neighbouring rooms highlight more recent and international art works including a large acrylic painting by French-Polish artist Roman Opalka from the “One to Infinity” series, a 1913 flat-weave wool rug by Art Deco Austrian architect-designer Josef Hoffman and a 1920 stage costume designed by Henri Matisse for Russian composer Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Le Chant du Rossignol.

Still on the ground floor, a series of works explore the vast subject of the human condition. They include an 1896 bronze cast of Auguste Rodin’s famed sculpture The Thinker, whose pose mirrors that of the protagonist of Ferdinand Hodler’s 1884 painting L’Ouvrier philosophe. From scenes of tender love to intense violence, other rooms revisit foundational myths which still bear relevance today. One 1914 oil painting by French-Swiss Nabi artist Félix Vallotton, titled Orphée dépecé par les Ménades, depicts the Ancient Greek prophet being mutilated by a group of maenads. Nearby, a similarly composed 17th-century oil painting originating from the Lombard School represents the abduction of Zeus’ daughter, Helen, by Paris. Additionally, in homage to the late Swiss artist Markus Raetz – who died last year – 15 of his works punctuate the exhibition. They include his first engravings from the 1960s, a print of a female nude made in collaboration with Swiss photographer Balthasar Burkhard and a cast iron sculpture from 1991 made as a tribute to Joseph Beuys.

Jean-Hubert Martin, Curator, says: “Today, most museum exhibitions adhere to chronological and medium-based display methods, grouping works by movements, schools, or historical moments. This systematic division too often restricts the possibilities of resonance between artefacts from different cultures, whose encounters are judged ahistorical. Despite the challenges, museums ought to be places of unexpected encounters which value knowledge but also human sensitivity and instinct.”

Marc-Olivier Wahler, Director of MAH, says: “For the past four decades, Jean-Hubert Martin has curated challenging seminal exhibitions at some of the world’s most influential institutions. As such, he is uniquely placed to revisit MAH’s permanent collection. His commitment to troubling traditional exhibition discourses contributes to MAH’s ongoing transformation into a museum of the future, and we are thrilled to be on this journey together. MAH is a museum of collective heritage and memory, where visitors can encounter objects and stories which help them understand each other and the world around them. Through our collection, we want to tell engaging and surprising stories.”