Prada presented the "24h Museum", designed by Francesco Vezzoli with AMO, Rem Koolhaas' think tank. The "24h Museum" opened in Paris on Tuesday 24 January for 24 hours only, till Wednesday 25 January, in the historic Palais d'Iéna, the building designed by Auguste Perret between 1936 and 1946, today home of CESE (Conseil Economique, Social et Environnemental), the French 'third Chamber'.
AMO's installation for the “24h Museum” is divided in three distinct sections, each inspired by a particular type of museum space: historic, contemporary and forgotten. The three sections are functions of the sequence of events that take place during the 24-hour period and occupy different areas of the ground floor of the monumental Palais d'Iéna. The central space is a large metal cage made from grills and neon lights that encloses the work by Francesco Vezzoli.
In the three sections – historic, contemporary and forgotten – Vezzoli is creating a “non-existent museum” where he is exhibiting his personal tribute to the eternal allure of femininity through interpretations of classical sculptures that make reference to contemporary divas. “They are my icons turned into sculptures and placed on marble pedestals”. At the top of the stairway, epicentre of the building, Vezzoli is placing a magnificent sculpture of a female figure that he is personalizing with the features of a mysterious goddess. Vezzoli's vision is of a museum that exists for just 24 hours and which is also a celebration of a collective rite that mixes visitors, red-carpet, Oedipus’ complex and night visions.
With the new “24h Museum”, Francesco Vezzoli is continuing his exploration of reciprocal influences and boundary-breaking in the visual arts, cinema and theatre that he has already investigated in the performance in which Veruschka did petit-point embroidery at the Venice Biennale in 2001, the Democrazy video in which Sharon Stone and Bernard-Henri Lévy impersonated figures in a fictitious political campaign for a hypothetical presidential election (Venice Biennale, 2007), and in Lady Gaga's performance at the MOCA in Los Angeles in 2009 when she played a live tribute to Diaghilev.
In its tradition of working with artists and making multiple approaches to the creative process – with a unique capacity to embrace utopias like The Double Club (London, 2008–09) and the Prada Transformer (Seoul, 2009) – Prada realizes with Francesco Vezzoli a new project of visual and linguistic experimentation in the “24h Museum”, a Baroque festival in which the entire exhibition lasts only 24 hours.
The “24h Museum” only opened on Tuesday 24 January with an invitation-only dinner. At 11.00 pm it is turned into a disco-club visible online at the site 24hoursmuseum.com. The wednesday was open to the public from 7.00 am to 12.00 pm and from 2.00 pm to 4.30 pm. Some guided tours for schools take place in the afternoon, followed by a closing vernissage from 6.30 pm to 8.30 pm. When the 24-hour period ended at 8.30 pm on 25 January 2012, the “24h Museum“ created by Francesco Vezzoli and AMO, closed.
