What do a statue of a child wearing a headset and L’Âge d’airain by Auguste Rodin have in common? What is L’Âge mûr by Camille Claudel doing next to a statue of a boy holding a drone? No, we haven’t lost our minds. We are simply discussing the latest artistic intervention by Elmgreen & Dragset—the artistic duo formed by Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset—hosted within one of the most famous museums in the world, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.
The exhibition titled “L’Addition,” which opened yesterday and will be on view until February 2, 2025, has come to life inside the museum’s historic sculpture nave, an area that has not been altered for 38 years. With a radical architectural intervention and an innovative conceptual approach, the artists have created an immersive experience that transforms how the public interacts with art and exhibition spaces.
Elmgreen & Dragset’s series of new figurative sculptures enters into dialogue with works from the past, revealing fascinating parallels and contrasts, especially in how masculinity has been represented throughout the centuries. Given that Elmgreen & Dragset’s goal is to change the viewer’s perception of important themes, the duo has not only brought to life this contrast between contemporary and ancient but has also played with the space, intervening in the museum’s architecture itself.
They have, in fact, designed a platform in the center of the nave, creating a sort of upside-down museum. With this artistic intervention, visitors will find themselves walking in a completely new context, where the duo’s contemporary sculptures do not merely rest on the floor but emerge from the walls or ceiling and blend with the classical works.
Image courtesy Elmgreen & Dragset, Musèe d’Orsay. Photography by Andrea Rossetti, 2024
