The MBAL is delighted to inaugurate the new MARIE-ANNE CALAME room, designed for the youngest visitors and in which exhibitions, workshops and meetings will take place regularly. Named in honour of Marie-Anne Calame, an emblematic figure from Le Locle who founded the Établissement de travail des Billodes in 1815 for children in difficulty, the space invites children to interact with the theme of the current exhibition. For The pleasure of text, museum director Federica Chiocchetti asked renowned American artist Anne Turyn to inhabit the room with her photographic project “Lessons & Notes”, first exhibited at the New Museum in New York in 1982. The MBAL is also delighted to collaborate for this cycle with the Bibliothèque des Jeunes du Locle, which is presenting a selection of books related to the exhibition.
ANNE TURYN, LESSONS & NOTES, 1982
In the classroom staged by Anne Turyn, we find objects that we all remember, such as exercise books, yo-yos, cut-outs and the unforgettable blackboard. Turyn inscribes her own questions on the latter, whose sharpness and depth contrast poetically with the blur of the child characters. Seemingly banal, these scenes are filled with an extreme tension between order and disorder, control and chaos, and force us to reflect on our own childhood, the role of education and the place we give to memory. For the exhibition, the walls are transformed into blackboards, allowing the youngest to explore their creativity.
Turyn’s work is part of the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
