Public museums or private museums?

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Luc Debraine - The potential closing of Geneva’s watch making Museum poses the question of replacing this type of institution by private areas, of which there are more and more.

The potential closing of Geneva’s watch making Museum poses the question of replacing this type of institution by private areas, of which there are more and more.

Luc Debraine

Will it open or won’t it? Closed since a considerable break-in at the end of 2002, the Genevan watch making Museum is still in a state of uncertainty. The project to renovate and secure this historic building, estimated at 13 million francs, was frozen last year. Genevan authorities have other priorities, notably to restore indeed extend the Art and History Museum, which could once again house the Town’s prestigious watch making collections as it did 35 years ago, before they found a place for themselves in the Bryn Bella villa on the Malagnou road. It would be the end of the watch making Museum. Unless the radical Genevan Party succeeds with its recent motion: it is demanding a new building be built at a cost barely higher than the blocked renovation project: 15 million. But the procedure risks being arduous. And long.

Last autumn, when the first rumours started buzzing regarding the museum closing, an argument that was put forward was the growing number of private museums that offer watch making stories too. Why then spend millions if museums that cost nothing for the tax payer fulfil the same role? Additional spaces that there are more and more of on the Geneva-Basel route.

An Internet museum?

Arnaud Tellier, the director of the Patek Philippe museum in Geneva, confided in the magazine Le Temps in October of last year that he regretted the freezing of the Malagnou museum renovation: "This political waiting-game is an insult to efforts relating to heritage and museums that have been undertaken for more than 100 years. It’s poking fun at the historic work of the Genevan arts Society and at a watch making collection that is still extremely rich despite the 2002 break-in". Nevertheless the Patek Philippe museum is a good example of a private institution that doesn’t only retrace its own history, but also that of watch making in general, indeed the history of time. The museum area is divided up into two collections over the four floors, one dedicated to watches from the past, the other to the Patek Philippe heritage.

The very existence of this big generalist museum at the heart of Geneva makes a professional like Dominique Fléchon, manager of exhibitions and editorial contents within the Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie think: "Is it relevant to have two big watch making museums in a town as small as Geneva and on top of that in the knowledge that this kind of institution doesn’t attract crowds of visitors? The Patek Philippe museum shows the history of its own brand. But it also dedicates considerable space to the history of watch making in general with pieces from other manufactures, for example exceptional pieces by Breguet, as well as a beautiful collection of enamels. For me that’s enough. Especially now an enthusiast if he wants to go further into the complex history of watch making can learn everything on the Internet. This is the way it is: the Web is more and more of a substitute for the former cultural model of museums".

Essential work

"It is nonetheless necessary to highlight that private watch making museums are above all marketing tools, continues Dominique Fléchon. The watch making history is sometimes shortened, partial, biased. By wandering through museums the visitor has the impression that each manufacture has invented the flattest watch, the smallest, the most complex in the world. It’s really gone the distance."

Let’s add that a public watch making museum like that of Geneva or that of La Chaux-de-Fonds has specific responsibilities and scientific skills. Its mission is to conserve, restore, save, make an inventory of, set up exhibitions and colloquiums of specialists, to publish their research organise competitions and create educational material for children. Its agenda isn’t at all the same as that of private areas, as competent as the latter are. Its heritage and scientific work is all the more essential as big public watch making museums are few and far between.

Private historic depth

At the same time, urged on by a favourable economic climate, private watch making museums or spaces are increasing in French-speaking Switzerland. The entrepreneurial logic is clear: the history of a manufacture is increasingly an identity asset, thus a commercial one. Showing one’s own past is about giving a dimension, a meaning, and an additional historic depth to ones current designs.

So Jaeger-LeCoultre in Sentier, Chopard in Fleurier and Swatch on the Pont de la Machine in Geneva have recently opened exhibition areas, with Tag Heuer in La Chaux-de-Fonds or Zenith in Locle opening soon. Some have utterly renovated their museums, like Audemars Piguet in Brassus, others hold temporary exhibitions open to everybody in their own premises, like François-Paul Journe in Geneva. Privatised it may be, but time is proving to be particularly dynamic! ■

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