The Met and Vacheron Constantin Unveil Art Produced Through Residency

Earlier this month at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the three artists chosen for the Artisan Residency Programme, a collaboration between the museum and Vacheron Constantin, unveiled the works that each has created through the program.

The Swiss luxury watch company launched the 18-month residency program with the Met in May 2025, making the third such partnership for the company. (The company also has partnerships with the Louvre, dating to 2019, and the Palace Museum in Beijing, established in 2024.)

The program is meant to pass on, preserve, and reinterpret traditional craft techniques. As part of the program, artists spent considerable time at both the Met and the Vacheron Constantin Manufacture in Geneva, and then used those experiences as launching points for their own works. The three artists selected were Aspen Golann, Ibrahim Said, and Joy Harvey.

For the residency, Golann produced a monumental wooden vessel adorned with nature motifs carved in bas relief. For the piece she drew inspiration from a series of wooden chests from the 17th to the 19th century in Connecticut and Pennsylvania. Those works and other similar ones in the Met’s collection exemplified a neoclassical New England style that informed her work, titled Vessel. During her time at the Manufacture, Golann worked with artists on enameling and engraving techniques.

Said’s work, Shaping Time, is a three-tiered vertical sculpture also adorned by relief carvings, as well as piercings and glazed surfaces that draw upon ancient Egyptian and Islamic objects in the Met’s collection. At the Manufacture, Said also worked with the artisans on enameling and engraving, as well as lacquer painting.

Harvey’s Ruined splendour is a bronze diadem composed of forged rhomboid bronze interlaced with panels inspired by the fine filigree seen on ancient Greek necklaces. After creation the work was pierced with rods in order to create its “ruination.” For the work, Harvey drew on ancient jewelry in the Met collection from Greece, India, and China, and then spent time in the Manufacture learning guillochage, a technique for engraving intricate patterns like leaves and flowers onto metal.

In a statement, Met CEO Max Hollein called the program “a collaborative initiative that embodies our mutual commitment to supporting artistic innovation and cultural dialogue.”