Mougins Museum of Classical Art – A newly opened private collection

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Sophie Bostock makes a detour from Cannes to explore a new gallery

Arriving by train in Cannes in early June this year, I took a taxi from the station and, some 15 minutes later, found myself outside the picturesque mediaeval village of Mougins – one of the many beautiful fortified hillside towns that make the Côte d’Azur so memorable. My mission was to visit a newly established private museum, the Mougins Museum of Classical Art, MMoCA (Musée d’Art Classique à Mougins), which holds a collection of ancient, neoclassical, modern and contemporary art. It is the collection of Christian Levett, a British-born investment manager whose passion for collecting emerged at the tender age of seven, when he began purchasing medals from the Great War and Victorian coins from specialist shops in south-east England. From this modest beginning has emerged the amazing assemblage of over 700 works of art and cultural artefacts that now form part of MMoCA.

I was greeted by the museum’s director, Dr Mark Merrony, a classical archaeologist, who caught up with me on the gallery’s second floor, which contains the world’s largest private collection of Graeco-Roman arms and armour. With the official opening of the museum only four days away (10 June 2011), Dr Merrony was, understandably, not available for an interview, but kindly spared time to meet and talk informally about this splendid collection, the layout and architecture of the building and the concept underpinning the display.

Dr Merrony directed my attention to a fine case of ancient helmets: Etruscan, Corinthian, Greek and Roman examples.  Curiously, displayed amongst these fine objects is a sculpture of a bronze helmet by contemporary artist, Jane Roberts. On the surrounding walls hang exquisite watercolours by Salvador Dali showing some of the illustrations from the Tarot card deck that the artist created for his wife Gala: thefive of cups; the ten of swords, the eight of swords.  These relate conceptually to the weapons on display in this space.

So, here we reach the conceptual crux of the matter – over the four floors of the museum the visitor will see art and artefacts from ancient civilizations interacting with more than a hundred drawings, paintings and sculptures by artists such as Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteau, Yves Klein, Roy Lichtenstein, Henry Moore, Pablo Picasso, Auguste Rodin, Peter Paul Rubens, and Andy Warhol, to mention but a few. The idea here is to highlight the considerable influence of the antique world on great artists from Rubens to Damien Hirst.

The museum focuses on the reciprocal influences of ancient civilizations (Egypt, Rome and Greece) and the continuity of their legacy through to the present day by imaginatively juxtaposing objects with diverse chronologies and from different societies. So, for example, we see an ancient bust of the goddess Nike adjacent to a drawing by Edgar Degas, and the archaeological fragment of a temple alongside a painting of Lichtenstein’s Temple of Apollo. Given my own preferred way of looking at art history, by approaching art thematically, and where my personal intellectual journeys are frequently trans-historical and trans-cultural I found the rationale underlining this display especially exciting.  

On my asking Dr Merrony why Mougins was selected as the site for MMoCA, he explained how the Côte d’Azur is situated in a historic region of the Mediterranean on the edge of ancient Greek civilization and at the heart of the Roman Empire. It lies close to the Graeco-Roman settlements of Nice (Nikaia), Cimiez (Cemenelum) and Antibes (Antipolis). Moreover, over the past century, with its wonderful light and microclimate the area has been a mecca for artists: Jean Cocteau, Fernand Léger, Man Ray, Francis Picabia and Pablo Picasso have all lived in and were inspired by Mougins.

The collection is arranged in four galleries over four floors in a Mediaeval house which has been refurbished to accommodate the artworks and objects. The building has been sympathetically renewed, maintaining its original exterior and with an elegant interior containing handcrafted showcases, marble and stone floors and a glass lift, which allows visitors to see the Roman mosaics on the staircases.  The galleries consist of the Crypt, above which are the entrance-level  ground floor, first floor and second floor. The crypt is a subterranean gallery, which celebrates the legacy of ancient Egypt from the Old Kingdom (2686–2181 BC) to the Ptolemaic period (332–30 BC). Objects displayed include tomb reliefs, funerary masks, statuettes of gods and goddesses in bronze and wood, and two remarkable wood coffins. Beside these we see ceramic work by Cocteau, a delicate drawing of the head of a sphinx by Rubens, and a Hubert Robert painting. 

The ground floor features a series of marble busts and statues of the great leaders, philosophers and famous individuals of Ancient Greece and Rome. Interspersed with these are sculpture, paintings and drawings by Henry Moore, Alessandro Turchi, Egon Schiele, Cézanne, Damien Hirst, Antony Gormley and others.

The focus of the first floor gallery is ancient religion and aspects of everyday life. Here, the visitor is introduced to Greek gods and their Roman counterparts – in the form of bronze figures, busts, and statues.  The theme of Graeco-Roman banqueting is addressed with displays of silver bowls, glassware, and drinking vessels together with Greek ceramic vases, Roman candelabra and floor mosaics. Alongside these objects are works of art by Rubens, Braque, Chagall, Dali, Klein, Modigliani, Masson, Degas and Rodin. 

The Armoury, on the second floor, contains an impressive array of helmets and body armour, displayed with a range of military-themed art.  The collection has been thoughtfully displayed and effectively fulfils the museum’s mission of showing how Egyptian and Graeco-Roman traditions have been reinvented in art forms trans-historically and globally.

The visitor to MMoCA can purchase a guide to the collection that is thorough and extensive. It contains 16 chapters and is 364 pages long. The book, edited by Mark Merrony, with contributions from specialists in their field, thematically addresses the different aspects of the collection and its relationship with Mougins and the broader Graeco-Roman traditions of the region. It includes a discussion of the house and its conversion into a museum; a history of Mougins followed by sections on Ancient Egypt, Greek art, Roman marble sculpture, mosaics, bronzes, silverware and jewellery, a section on materials and manufacture, Graeco Italic militaria, Roman militaria, Greek and Roman coins, Rubens and neo-classical art, and ‘classical’ modern art. The volume is well illustrated and has been written in an accessible style to appeal to non-specialists and scholars alike. It is a substantial volume although not a catalogue per se, but an extensive and very readable guide to the museum and its objects. A good reference, the guidebook is, in common with the museum itself, broad in its ambition.

The guidebook Mougins Museum of Classical Art edited by Mark Merrony is published in English and French by SARL, Mougins Museum of Classical Art, 2011. 364 pp., 800 colour illus, €49 (hbk) €27 pbk. ISBN: 978-2-9539357-0-7 (hbk) 978-2-9539357-1-4 (pbk)