The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is teaming up with the Swiss watchmaker Vacheron Constantin to launch a residency for artists whose practices incorporate craft or artisanal materials and techniques. The residency, formally launched on 6 June, will last 18 months and allow artists to spend time with the collections and staff of the Met, as well as the master artisans at Vacheron Constantin’s Geneva headquarters.
The three inaugural artists taking part in the Artisan Residency initiative are the US furniture-maker Aspen Golann, the Egyptian ceramic artist Ibrahim Said and the British Italian jewellery designer Joy Harvey. The programme’s inaugural run will culminate in October 2026, when the artists will show new work at the Met.
“This initiative embodies our mutual commitment to artistic innovation and cultural dialogue,” Max Hollein, the director and chief executive of the Met, said in a statement, adding that the selected artists “are remarkably skilled practitioners who breathe new life into traditional techniques”.
The great hall at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Photo: Brett Beyer
Golann, who is based in New Hampshire and teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design, is trained in historical US furniture-making practices spanning the 17th to the 19th centuries. She employs these techniques to foreground issues related to labour, gender and power in a practice that includes drawings, handheld functional objects and furniture.
Said comes from a family of ceramicists in Fustat, Egypt, and first learned pottery from his father. His work reinterprets forms and techniques from ancient Egyptian ceramic vessels, adapted with a contemporary and at times even futuristic sculptural sensibility.
Trained as a chemist, Harvey pivoted careers and devoted herself to jewellery-making nearly a decade ago. In 2021, she and Marco Rossi founded the Rimini-based studio La Luce, whose materials are all sustainably sourced; the gold and silver they use is 100% fair-mined, and they only employ traceable gemstones and diamonds.
“At the Met, we believe deeply in the power of art to ignite curiosity and, at the same time, to redefine artistic and cultural boundaries,” Heidi Holder, the museum’s chair of education, said in a statement. “This residency is a testament to that belief, offering the artisans access to our collection, scholarly resources and the expertise of Met scientists, curators, educators and staff to inform, inspire and support the reimagining of traditional craft knowledge and techniques for the next generations.”
