It is the symbolic exhibition of confinement.
A textbook case, an extreme case.
In a year, it has been assembled, disassembled, reassembled and will soon close, without ever having been able to open.
Grounded by the Covid-19 epidemic.
A great mess.
"Black & White: an aesthetic of photography", which sweeps 150 years of photography history through some 200 images, from Nadar to Helmut Newton, was to be held at the Grand Palais.
It stands there, in a sense, perfectly attached, in a splendid scenography, but without visitors.
And without hope of welcoming any.
The building, beyond the pandemic which locks museums, will close completely in March for three years of work, until the Olympic Games of 2024. Bad luck, for the organizers of "Black & White", who tell us this crazy year.
Initially, the exhibition, a selection of masterpieces from the photographic collections from the National Library of France (BNF), was to welcome the public from April 8 to July 6, 2020. Arrives on March 17, date of the first confinement, and “The astonishment”, while the editing is in full swing: “We couldn't believe it.
We did not even consider not being able to open, ”recall Dominique Versavel and Héloïse Conésa, curators at the BNF, two of the four curators of the exhibition, who have been working there since 2017.
A kit exhibition stored in the basements
This dirty virus, Christelle Terrier, head of this project at the Grand Palais, has however already crossed paths without knowing it: “I was sick two weeks before confinement.
There weren't any tests or anything yet, but 300% I think I got it.
I felt that we were in the red zone ”.
The exhibition is almost ready: “The plasters were done, all the very complex picture rails had been installed in the rooms.
All you had to do was paint and take the works out of the boxes, ”rewinds the latter.
"A missed appointment" for the organizers, the curators of the exhibition Héloïse Conésa and Dominique Versavel, and Christelle Terrier and Virginie d'Allens, project manager and audiovisual multimedia manager at the Grand Palais.
/ LP / Delphine Goldsztejn
The uncertainty begins.
“From week to week, we wait.
We provide for possible audience gauges, we drag the calendar without stopping, ”remember the commissioners.
When deconfinement arrives, in mid-May, no luck: the Grand Palais must host other events during a tumultuous summer, and prefers to postpone the exhibition until November.
Each piece of its scenography - all these picture rails, the partitions that support the works in each room, sometimes cut to the millimeter - is cut out and numbered so that it can be reassembled.
This enormous construction set, contained in 35 pallets, is stored in the basements of the Grand Palais.
A titanic job, but hope dominates: "We were to open on November 11, at the same time as the Paris Photo fair, it was a perfect date, finally", remember the curators.
The works are installed, everything is ready.
A few days before the opening, the museums must close again, on October 30, with the re-containment: “We did not foresee that culture was going to be put under cover,” sigh the organizers.
A succession of disappointed hopes begins.
“Until recently, we hoped to open.
That's what galvanized me.
I was in robot mode, my ultimate goal was to hang the exhibition and show it.
When we returned from the Christmas holidays, we said to ourselves that even for a month, or even a fortnight, that would already be that, ”said one.
“If we're a little honest, we didn't really believe in it lately.
There is the emotional side, and the reasonable side… We know that the health situation is more critical in winter, ”tempers the other.
There remains this helplessness: “It must have been a great year for the BNF.
An enhancement of our wonders at the Grand Palais but also at Orsay in another ready-made exhibition which has not opened either.
It is a missed appointment with the general public ”.
"What is painful is to have always hoped"
A film was shot to keep an archive.
In the process of being edited, it should be broadcast on the Grand Palais site, with paid access, in February.
But the organizers still have to ask for their agreement from each artist, beneficiary or agency: emails and reminders for 200 people each time, “an infinite amount of painstaking work”.
Strolling with us in her exhibition, Dominique Versavel seems both proud and disconcerted: “I did not think she would be so beautiful.
It's even more frustrating not being able to share it.
I feel like I'm uncorking a very good bottle for myself… ”“ What is painful is that I have always hoped.
We feel like a frog that is scalding slowly, ”confesses his colleague.
“I feel like I'm branded with a hot iron.
Every time I come in, it pinches me, ”adds the project manager.
Of course, there is the catalog, which is selling well.
Videos of artists, such as Woodkid, Yvan Attal or Pénélope Bagieu, who share their perspective on the exhibition on the Grand Palais website.
A partnership with the RATP which makes it possible to show reproductions of 38 images of the exhibition in very large format in thirteen metro or RER stations.
And also, and above all, research work: “It's never lost” for the commissioners.
Who also dream of an "after", a presentation elsewhere, one day.
Leafing through the catalog, we stop at a sublime shot of Cartier-Bresson.
A photo of a funeral.
