Dimensions of Time at Geneva’s MAH

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Dimensions of Time at Geneva’s MAH - Musée d’art et d’histoire
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Ten Billion Years. Geneva’s Musée d’Art et d’Histoire (MAH) invites visitors to consider time not on a human scale but from the dizzying perspective of the universe in a thought-provoking exhibition (July 22-October 30) that confronts scientific time with that of artists

Watchmakers willingly revisit the fundamentals of their craft, whether the resurgence of vintage, the perfecting of mechanisms invented hundreds of years ago, the rebirth of forgotten brands or other bridges through time.

Physicists go to extreme lengths when measuring time, casting their gaze as far back as possible and using the most sophisticated technologies to reach back to the primeval moment of the Big Bang.

Such diametrically opposed paths perhaps explain why time as conceived by watchmakers is not that of the physicist. The former counts in seconds, the latter in nanoseconds. For watchmakers, time is governed by the 29 days of a lunar cycle. For astrophysicists, the 10 billion years of the sun’s lifespan.

Dimensions of time at Geneva’s MAH

Despite these differing approaches, the object is the same and it is this imbrication which forms the core of the exhibition at the MAH. Making the juncture between the two is art, a timeless discipline. The paradox is perhaps not as great as it may seem, for science, watchmaking and art demand creativity and the innovative thinking required to imagine lunar modules and giant telescopes, the thinnest hands or the most precise complications.

Le MAH unifie les différentes  dimensions du temps

In a staging that plays on the contrast between the infinitely small and the infinitely large, the MAH draws compelling parallels that probe our experience of time, juxtaposing a seventeenth-century oil lamp with modern artworks and Patek Philippe’s 1983 electronic master clock for Geneva airport.

Le MAH unifie les différentes  dimensions du temps

Products of human intelligence and the human hand, these creations have one thing in common: aestheticism. We often hear of the elegance of an equation or a mathematical solution. The beauty of a dial. The spectacle of the universe. These are the space(s) and time(s) that Einstein related in his equations of spacetime. The MAH’s exploration of these interwoven dimensions, with the pursuit of beauty and exactness as its arc, offers a welcome perspective as you read these pages on a smartphone or the latest laptop, while wearing a watch that has remained fundamentally unchanged for some two centuries...