BRUSSELS.- Both a museum and an arts centre, the ADAM is devoted to art and design from the 20th century and today.

Established after the Atomium’s acquisition of the Plasticarium collection in December 2014, the ADAM presents a permanent exhibition showing the various creative uses made of plastic from the 1950s to today.

Besides the large area dedicated to the Plasticarium collection, there is a space of more than 1000m2 designed to hold temporary exhibitions showcasing major themes and artists from the worlds of design, photography and contemporary art.

The ADAM also contains an auditorium with about 400 seats, and offers educational and cultural services with activities designed for children, teens and school groups, as well as a programme of lectures and screenings linked to the themes that have been explored.

Eames & Hollywood
240 unknown and unpublished photographs taken by Charles Eames over the years on Billy Wilder’s films settings are exhibited at ADAM for the first time ever.

The audience will discover the magic behind the scene, and what means the industry of cinema. Additionally, the cinephile will also discover Wilder’s film sets and play in recognizing, here, a set of Sabrina (1954), or there, the outdoor locations of A Ace in the Hole (1951).

Designers Charles and Ray Eames always practiced photography, a facet of their work less well known than their exceptional furniture (still in production) and architecture in Santa-Monica (Cal.). But, their photographic opera, amounting to more than 750,000 images, projected on screens as media installation, far from having a merely documentary value, represent an exceptional work of art that demands to be re-discovered.

Among the numerous series of photography they realized, one series entitled Movie-Sets forges the exhibition eAMes & HollywooD. The series taken by Charles Eames is entirely dedicated to the film sets and the natural settings chosen by his friend, the world acclaimed film director Billy Wilder, for his own movies.

Billy Wilder who received 3 Oscars has realized milestones and blockbusters films such as Sunset Boulevard (1950), The Seven Years Itch (1955), Some Like it Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960), etc. Starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Kirk Douglas, William Holden, and many others, Wilder was less popular than the star and the movies he directed.

On the private side, Wilder shared a life-long enduring friendship with Charles and Ray Eames: didn’t they come along with the Wilders for their wedding and for their honeymoon trip?

“Charles used to say they learned more about architecture from watching a Billy Wilder film than talking to most architects,” recalls Eames Demetrios, grand-son of the Eames and director of the Eames Foundation. The Eames and Wilder worked together on several occasions. They designed a house for Wilder… that would not be erected. Charles worked on the second shift of Lindberg’s Wilder’s biography The Spirit of Saint-Louis (1957) Meanwhile, Wilder collaborated with the Eames for the American National Exhibition in Moscow (1959) where the couple presented Glimpses of the U.S.A., a giant 7-screens simultaneous multimedia installation exhibiting kaleidoscopic facets of the American life to the Russian audience.

Or Ray designed the opening credits for Love in the Afternoon (1957) Curiously, to help workaholic Wilder to nap between takes when spending days and nights in the Hollywood studios, the Eames designed for him a specific lounge chair. It was confortable enough to fall asleep, and purposely narrow enough to wake him up as soon as in deep sleep, his arms would fall on each side of the body. No surprise, the chair was industrialized.

Armed with his trusty camera, Charles was continuously taking photographs of very high pictorial quality. He realized less portraits of actors such as Audrey Hepburn or Humphrey Bogart in the set of Sabrina or Kirk Douglas in the natural decor of the mountains in Ace in the Hole (Wilder’s favorite movie) than of the extras, the assistants, the make-up designers, technicians at work, the focus on the devices, machines, smoke engine, etc.

Eames’s photographs are fascinating. Movie-Sets is not the work realized by a set photographer on a film set, but it is the work of an artist. His photographs catch the magic of the movie making of course, but they do reach greatness with their abstract atmosphere served by elegant compositions.