A Note About the Musée Jean Cocteau and Menton
Addressing my most often asked question that until now, I could not truly answer.
Bonjour à tous et à toutes,
I have been asked one question more than any other for several years now: “What is going on with the Musée Jean Cocteau-collection Severin Wunderman in Menton? I saw it’s closed… do you know when it will reopen? What happened?”
Some of you may have read the article published on September 2 in France’s Le Monde newspaper. I am thankful to Roxana Azimi for her balanced reporting. In the days since, the story has been picked up by many other outlets like Le Figaro and Nice-Matin (with whom I did an interview, which you can read here.) My name has been circulated among well-meaning strangers, journalists and political figures, all of whom have expressed an interest in this story and in how it moves forward. It has been overwhelming. For some more of my personal feelings about what’s going on, I’m removing the paywall as this will be my statement for the time being.
If you wish to cover this further, please contact Aubrie Wienholt aubriewienholt@prforartists.com and Colter Ruland colter.ruland@prforartists.com.
Merci,
Chloë
For a long time I did not realize that the word “Anonymous” was not actually my grandfather Severin’s name, but a word meaning that he wanted to skirt recognition for his good deeds. I simply knew him as our family’s beloved “Poppy,” who would often take me on tours of his house to share his love of the beautiful pictures on the wall with me.
Severin Wunderman spent his life adoring and loving his art collection. It was, and remains, the largest collection in the world of works by the iconoclastic French artist Jean Cocteau. It also contained works by Cocteau’s contemporaries: Pablo Picasso, Christian Bérard, Françoise Gilot, Amedeo Modigliani, Giorgio de Chirico, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Alphonse Mucha, and more. Painstakingly acquired over almost his entire lifetime, he started collecting Cocteau before he knew who Cocteau was.
It all started with a simple drawing of the notorious Cocteau character Dargelos. As the legend states, he spotted it in the vitrine of a shop and spent an entire week’s wages on it when he was nineteen years old. “What I remember most is the scene at home when I gave my wife the [money] left from my paycheck… I still have the drawing. I don’t have the wife anymore,” he told Vogue in 1989.
While he was growing his knowledge of Cocteau – and his art collection – Severin was concurrently growing his business, which went from zero to sixty in record time. He founded Gucci Timepieces and in doing so, invented the fashion watch, a division which nearly every luxury fashion house has added to their repertoire in the decades since. None of which have touched the success Severin achieved with Gucci. Gucci Timepieces has been universally recognized by those who were there, or who know the history of the iconic Italian house, as being the reason why it survived otherwise financially disastrous decades and exists today. All of which is to say: he made a lot of money.
Growing up, I attended many events thrown to raise money or celebrate philanthropic causes. Sometimes, they were in Severin’s honor. Many times, either he or my mother would point to a plaque listing names of large donors on the wall and say that we donated money. He was almost always “Anonymous.”
The amount of money that Severin gave to philanthropic causes is estimated to be in the range of $150–200 million. He died in 2008. That’s not adjusted for inflation. As my aunt Deborah often says, “He was the kind of guy who if he had a dollar, gave away 80 cents.”
Of the causes that he allowed his name to be ascribed to, or rather – who overrode his wishes of anonymity – there were three: the Shoah Foundation at USC, which lists his name on their site if you look hard enough for it; the Severin Wunderman Division of Thoracic Surgery at UCLA’s Geffen School of Medicine; and the Musée Jean Cocteau-collection Severin Wunderman in Menton.
By comparison to the hundreds of millions he devoted to other causes, I want to be clear: a collection of art worth, depending on who’s estimating, 7 to 15 million euros is a drop in the bucket. But Severin gave this collection back to France because it was his deepest desire to make this cultural fortune accessible to the public.
Which is why, 20 years after this monumental donation, it is so deeply unfortunate that the communication between Menton and the Severin Wunderman Family Foundation has been so far unproductive and opaque. We are currently at an impasse wherein we are learning of the city’s position via the press, rather than via open communication. The terms of the donation have not been honored, and on our side, we remain in the dark as to when and in what way they are expected to be respected again.
The city of Menton has moved the goal posts of reopening nearly each time they have been asked about it. They have failed to honor Severin’s wishes as outlined in the donation contract and have not displayed the art in a manner that respects them.
The 2018 flooding of the Musée Jean Cocteau-collection Severin Wunderman came as the direct result of an unprecedented climate event. This is the first time in contemporary art history that a collection of this size and stature has been damaged to this extent by sea water. Unfortunately, I am not sure that it will be the last, what with the number of arts institutions located in precarious environments: Miami, Venice, Los Angeles. The list goes on. The restoration efforts made over the last seven years have been nothing short of awe-inspiring, as many conservationists had to improvise and find ways to solve problems such as: how does one remove caked salt from ink drawings on paper? (The answer: they are rinsed in fresh water first, the thought of which makes my stomach knot itself.) I often feel like a canary in a coal mine when I talk about the flood: the art world needs to wake up and take notice of what is at stake with climate change.
Having such an extraordinary collection of art by an incredibly iconic, important and iconoclastic artist such as Jean Cocteau that has been kept together – and survived such a disaster – is no small feat. As a writer and lover of Cocteau’s work, I will continue to do what I love to do, which is share the story of both Cocteau and Severin’s lives and legacies with any audience that wishes to listen to me, and hold on to my hope for a resolution.
I was hesitant to ask you about the museum back in July as I figured the answer would be complex, and you were gracious in your answer. I'm sorry the city hasn't honored your grandfather's generous donation, and I can only imagine how painful the process of restoration has been. I hope the collection finds a home that respects Cocteau's work.