Acquired Taste

From the 1 June till 31 July 2019, Cartier and the Palace Museum are presenting the exhibition Beyond Boundaries: Cartier and The Palace Museum Craftsmanship and Restoration Exhibition in the Meridian Gate Gallery of the Palace Museum in Beijing. Ten years after the success of Cartier Treasures – Jeweller to Kings, King of Jewellers, in the Meridian Gate Gallery, located at the south entrance of the Forbidden City, this cultural event celebrates the bonds of friendship between Cartier and China, between inspiration and shared savoir-faire.

These bonds of friendship and this savoir-faire came together in the form of a joint restoration project carried out by the Palace Museum and Cartier, involving six watch and clock movements from the Palace Museum collections, at the Cartier Manufacture in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. In this exhibition, the encounter between Cartier creations and those of the Palace Museum is an invitation to travel through time and space in order to appreciate the significance of the cultural connections between the treasures of the East and West.

Beyond Boundaries: Cartier and The Palace Museum Craftsmanship and Restoration Exhibition unfolds around three universes and proposes a simultaneously chronological and thematic interpretation seen through the prism of savoir-faire, the common theme running through the exhibition. The spatial layout has been entrusted to scenographer Nathalie Crinière whose vision, playing with the motifs created by the calligrapher’s brush stroke, is what gives the exhibition its overall coherence.

More than 800 pieces dating from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) to today are gathered together from the Cartier Collection, the Maison’s archives, the collections of the Palace Museum and public institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, the Qatar Museums and the Musée international d’horlogerie, La Chaux-de-Fonds (Switzerland), as well as private and princely collections.

Beyond Boundaries – the title – evokes the concept of this exhibition through a multitude of evocations hovering between poetry and philosophy. It is an invitation to go beyond anything that separates and divides, not only classification, categories, frontiers, continents and limits, but also anything that seems immutable, such as knowledge, certitude, definitions or preconceived ideas, in order to invent a free space where a new vision of creativity might emerge.

Firmly rooted in the will to share a common vision, in a spirit of respect and understanding of protecting and enriching a heritage, the exhibition aims to reveal and explore mediums that boost cultural exchange, including inspirations and savoir-faire.

Exhibition information:

1. WECHAT mini program: A further experience to explore and understand the exhibition offline, thanks to an educational, interactive and sharable content.

2. Virtual Reality Experience: A meaningful and entertaining VR experience that pushes the boundaries of story-telling, combining with the state of the art technology and poetical recreation of the world of selected Cartier pieces. These experience will be available at Cartier boutiques in K11 in Shanghai and China World in Beijing.

3. Two demonstration sessions with the watchmaking experts from the Cartier Manufacture and the Palace Museum’s Conservation Department are programmed for one week in June and July.

4. The exhibition’s catalogue is published by the Palace Museum Publishing House. Available in English and Chinese, it comes in a boxed presentation containing three volumes, mirroring the exhibition.

Beyond Boundaries: Cartier and The Palace Museum Craftsmanship and Restoration Exhibition is open Tuesdays to Sundays, 8:30am till 5pm, and closed on Mondays (except for national holidays).

To book your tickets online, go here. Foreign visitors are required to provide passport numbers during booking.

Find out more about Beyond Boundaries: Cartier and The Palace Museum Craftsmanship and Restoration Exhibition here.

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