The Norman Foster curation throws new light on Cartier’s 20th Century Modernism
By James Gurney

Cartier gives good exhibition and the latest, Cartier In Motion at the Design Museum, is no exception. Curated by Norman Foster in collaboration with the Design Museum?s director, Deyan Sudjic and Cartier?s Heritage Director, Pierre Raniero, the show offers much more than another, admittedly welcome, opportunity to see how Cartier?s century of watches developed – it being 100 years since the creation of the Cartier Tank.
 
Cartier in Motion – Trailer from Design Museum on Vimeo.
Alongside Tank variants that might surprise even the well-informed (see our gallery below), the exhibition?s meat is the relationship that Louis Cartier had with the emerging technologies of the early 20th Century and the pioneers behind them, particularly Alberto Santos-Dumont and Gustave Eiffel.
Foster?s curation places Cartier in the context of the new, post-Haussman Paris, the fast developing power technologies that reduced weeks-long journeys into affairs of days and hours and in that respect resonates with the Design Museum?s other show, ?California: Designing Freedom?, which charts how contemporary technologies have influenced design. This was a world where Santos-Dumont was a pioneer with an enthusiastic following who published plans for his Demoiselle aeroplane in Popular Mechanics, where it was quite normal for an inventive mind to design a car or a pleasure-boat.
On dis...