Sèvres Extraordinaire: Sculpture from 1740 Until Today

Exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center, New York, September 20, 2024 - January 5, 2025

For nearly three centuries, the Manufacture de Sèvres has played a central role in French artistic production. Founded in 1740 as a small workshop of ambitious, enterprising craftsmen, the factory moved from its original location in Vincennes in 1756 to larger premises in Sèvres, halfway between Paris and Versailles. Three years later, Louis XV took full control of the factory, initiating a decisive relationship with the French state that continues to this day. 
This exhibition catalog brings together nearly two hundred objects and highlights the production of sculptures in the broadest sense - vases, centerpieces, clocks, busts, figures, medallions... - over the 280 years of the institution's existence. It offers an overview of the artists, craftsmen and patrons who have converged over the years at Sèvres, whose ideas represent a microcosm of broader developments in art and culture. 
The book includes drawings, plaster molds and terracotta models held in the archives of the Manufacture de Sèvres and the Musées Nationaux, as well as completed sculptures by artists such as François Boucher (1703-1770), Carrier-Belleuse (1824-1887), Rodin (1840-1917), Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010), and Penone (1947-).