Roubaix Save the Queen: Great Britain in La Piscine’s collections
8 October 2022 – 8 January 2023
During the 19th century, Great Britain rose to become the most powerful country in the world. Boasting a vast colonial empire and unrivalled production capacity, it imposed its supremacy on the rest of the world. This domination was not limited to economic affairs: in addition to its language, Britain exported ideas, customs, tastes and behavioural norms.
For its Roubaix Save the Queen exhibition, La Piscine (which was designed, like British museums, to eschew any hierarchy between Fine Arts and the Applied Arts) has delved into its collections to select artworks and objects that illustrate this influence. It is, of course, clearly visible in the arts domain: the exhibition, therefore, includes paintings and sculptures, as well as ceramics, which translate the mutual interest that artists on either side of the Channel have shown for one another. In the town of Roubaix, British taste has had a particularly strong impact on textile creation. Whether Liberty or Paisley patterns, tartans or Prince of Wales check, a huge variety of British patterns became popular throughout the world and still inspire designers to this day. Roubaix Save the Queen will trace their history as well as exploring British fashion, with its quintessential take on elegance and unrivalled capacity to renew traditions by adding a touch of eccentricity and rebellion.
Curators: Pauline Dubouclez, Amélie Boron and Norah Mokrani
The design was made possible thanks to generous support from the paints distributed by Tollens.
