Fondation Jacques-Edouard Berger - World Art Treasures


Fondation Jacques-Edouard Berger
Rue Jean-Jacques Cart 8
CH-1006 Lausanne
e-mail:  fondationjeb@gmail.com
Wikipedia

 

Jacques-Edouard Berger, born in 1945, died unexpectedly of a heart attack in the fall of 1993, midway in a career which had taken him by then to the four corners of the earth. From his earliest years on, his life had been totally absorbed by the pursuit of art and beauty. During a period as a curator of the Museum of Fine Arts in Lausanne, he was already active in organizing exhibitions and writing many articles and prefaces. But the world at large beckoned and, leaving his moorings, he set out and spent many months each year in traveling all over the world. He was particularly attracted to the ancient civilizations of Egypt, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Burma, etc., yet never neglected his European heritage as mirrored and celebrated in countless museums and galleries in Europe and the United States.

As the artistic leader and guide of numerous groups of eager admirers with whom he shared his vision and insights, he succeeded, over time, in creating a collection of well over 125,000 color slides, his own photographs, capturing the masterpieces that quickened his emotions. In turn, this unique treasure of his personal discoveries served to illustrate and animate the series of lectures he would give, between travels, to an ever growing following, lectures that, in focusing on the powerful revelation hidden in the works of art, sought to provide a veritable initiation. Two books "Pierres d'Egypte" and "L'oeil et l'éternité" also attest to this original approach and the acumen of his intuition.

The profound sorrow and distress caused by his untimely death prompted number of his friends and admirers to create the Foundation that bears his name and whose principal purpose is to promulgate the discovery and love of art.

World Art Treasures is a great, new undertaking to meet this challenge. In addition to the initially offered display successive programs are in preparation. They will deal thematically with the civilizations of Egypt, China, Japan, etc.

The important personal collection of rare artifacts will become the subject matter of special programs.

"There are men who have molded our consciousness: Confucius, Buddha, Plato, Saint Augustine, Leibniz, Newton, more recently Tagore, Einstein, Bohr.

There are works of art that have affected our vision to the point of transforming our way of perceiving the world.

Events, men and their creations have thus fashioned History.

But are not our creations, and more precisely our works of art, the most intricate and faithful evidence of our mutations ? "

   

Author and contributors

  • Author and documentation Jacques-Edouard Berger
  • The project is directed by:
    Professor René Berger ( 1994-2009 )
    Fondation Jacques-Edouard Berger ( 2009-2012 )
  • Web design: Francis Lapique/EPFL
  • Translation French-English: Peter S. Jordan, Los Angeles and Marguerite Mounier;
  • Jeannine Gabriel: transcription from conference notes: Sandro Botticelli;
  • Line Chatelain : transcription from conference and travel notes: Johannes Vermeer and The enchanted gardens of the Renaissance;
  • Truus et Philippe Salomon-De-Jong: Photographers ( program "Jacques-Edouard Berger:A Shared Vision" ) and transcription from conference nores: Le vertige divin;
  • Olivier Saltet: transcription from travel notes: Angkor;
  • Robert Cottet: transcription from conference notes: Georges de La Tour ;
  • Christiane Henneberger and Jeannine Gabriel: transcription from travel notes: Borobudur;
  • Marica Bonhôte, de Malm Jean-Félix: lectures;
  • Rose-Marie Berger, Jacqueline Dousson and Michelle Talandier: miscellaneous.
  • Noëlle Corboz: Slide library (US)
  • Aline Debusigne: Slide library (Egypt)
   

History

Art from ... (July 94), Abydos (October 94), Fayoum (January 95), Sandro Botticelli (May 95), Un regard partagé (December 95), Jardins (March 96), Vermeer (June 96), Angkor (May 97), Vertige Divin (May 97), Georges de La Tour (September 97), Borobudur (December 97), Caravaggio ( March 98) , Travels for Art (98-??), Tell el Amarna ( Dec 99 ), Ramose/Sennedjem ( May 00 ), New Home Page (November 00), Audio lectures (2002-?), Japon (2004), new Search Tools (2004), new navigation (2006), new site(2008), picasa version (2012)