The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently opened its grand halls to a trio of works born from an artisan residency program co-hosted with Swiss watchmaker Vacheron Constantin. The unveiling took place early May, spotlighting how traditional craft techniques can be re-imagined through contemporary artistic practice. Each piece reflects a deep dialogue between museum collections and the expertise of the Vacheron Constantin Manufacture in Geneva, illustrating the program’s core mission of preservation, reinterpretation, and knowledge transfer.
Program overview and guiding principles
Conceived in May 2025, the 18-month residency marks the third collaboration of its kind for Vacheron Constantin, following earlier partnerships with the Louvre (2019) and Beijing’s Palace Museum (2024). The initiative invites emerging artists to spend extended periods at both the Met and the Geneva manufactory, absorbing centuries-old techniques such as enameling, engraving and guillochage. Participants are then encouraged to fuse these skills with research drawn from the museum’s own holdings, producing works that act as bridges between historic objects and present-day creativity. As Met chief executive Max Hollein expressed, the endeavor is “a collaborative initiative that embodies our mutual commitment to supporting artistic innovation and cultural dialogue.”
Aspen Golann’s Vessel
American artist Aspen Golann responded to the residency by crafting a monumental wooden container titled Vessel. The piece features intricate bas relief carvings of vegetal motifs, echoing a series of 17th- to 19th-century wooden chests from Connecticut and Pennsylvania. Those historic examples, showcased in the Met’s collection, exemplify a neoclassical New England aesthetic that informed Golann’s design language. While stationed at the Geneva Manufacture, she explored the subtleties of enameling and refined her approach to engraving, techniques that subtly enhance the vessel’s tactile presence.
Ibrahim Said’s Shaping Time
Egyptian-born artist Ibrahim Said presented Shaping Time, a vertically stacked, three-tier sculpture punctuated by relief carvings, pierced elements, and glazed surfaces. The work draws visual inspiration from ancient Egyptian and Islamic artifacts displayed at the Met, translating their ornamental language into a contemporary form. During his stay at the Vacheron Constantin Manufacture, Said engaged with master artisans to master enameling, fine engraving, and traditional lacquer painting. These processes enabled him to achieve the sculpture’s luminous finish and intricate surface narrative.
Joy Harvey’s Ruined splendour
British sculptor Joy Harvey introduced Ruined splendour, a bronze diadem composed of forged rhomboid segments interlaced with panels that echo the delicate filigree of ancient Greek necklaces. After assembly, the piece was deliberately pierced with metal rods, a gesture that conveys a sense of decay and historical loss. Harvey’s research spanned the Met’s collections of Greek, Indian, and Chinese jewelry, guiding the diadem’s ornamental vocabulary. At the Geneva atelier she learned the art of guillochage, an exacting method of engraving repetitive leaf-like patterns onto metal, which imparts the work with its signature texture.
Collectively, the three creations illustrate how the artisan residency program serves as a fertile laboratory for cross-cultural exchange, marrying museum scholarship with the technical mastery of haute horlogerie. The Met and Vacheron Constantin’s partnership therefore not only showcases individual artistic achievement but also sets a precedent for future collaborations that seek to keep time-honored crafts vibrant within the contemporary art world.
