A R T A S S E T S

To announce the 1999 merger of Pricewaterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand, Art Assets created an exhibition celebrating the diversity of knowledge and experience that constitutes the core of the new PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Thirty-six priceless works of art aggregating $15 million were brought to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in three Smartcases™. The works of art, each representing a separate culture, region or age, was individually placed in the center of every table during the private dinner.

The New Encyclopedists follows in the footsteps of the French intellectual Diderot, who began writing the original Encyclopedia in 1748 in an attempt to expose the European public to a wider range of truth than they had ever known before. French officials and the Church were enraged, not only because Diderot summarized contemporary knowledge but also because he suggested that everyone should have access to the truth. Diderot was jailed for his attempt to enlighten the public in 1749.

Two hundred and fifty years later, PricewaterhouseCoopers is bringing Diderot's collection of knowledge to a universal level. As the world's largest professional expertise service organization, PricewaterhouseCoopers has become the New Encyclopedist, enlarging global communication and working towards the sharing of knowledge with the international community.

By James J. Shiro, Chief Executive Officer, PricewaterhouseCoopers

PricewaterhouseCoopers takes great pleasure in offering you a special viewing of The New Encyclopedists, an exhibition created specifically for you to enjoy during the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

The exhibition reminds us that varied peoples, inhabiting many different parts of the world, have created over the centuries a vast repository of knowledge and experience. The earliest work is the 4th millennium B.C.; the most recent was crafted just a few years ago. Each is part of the encyclopedia of human creativity.

The integration of three concepts -- People, Knowledge and Worlds -- is the creative underpinning of this collection. Not coincidentally, these concepts are the foundation of our brand. People, endowed with aspirations and individuality, shape what we want to be as a worldwide organisation. Knowledge enables what we can be. And our clients, operating in a diversity of worlds, define what we must be.

As the world approaches a new millenium, globisation and new knowledge technologies are dramatically reshaping the environments in which we do business and live privately as members of families and communities. The prospects are potentially limitless. The theme of the World Ecomonic Forum Annual Meeting this year reminds us of the need to exercise profound responsibility as we contribute, each in our own way, to this highly innovative moment in human history.

This exhibition also speaks to that need by putting before us elements from our richly diverse yet common global heritage.

Curated by Helen Varola, Curator, Art Assets LLC

The exhibition, The New Encyclopedists, asks all of the invited guests of PricewaterhouseCoopers, to consider the art and minds from distant and present centuries as we usher in the next age of global affairs.

An encyclopedic vision of the arts was sensitively envisioned by Diderot in France in 1751. Diderot’s encyclopédie paid tribute to the dignity of labor, and particularly to the extraordinary artisanry through which men and women discovered and transformed the material world. Diderot’s work, a panoptic expression of humankind, is now resident in our memory as a golden legend.

By bringing works from all over the world that span centuries of time, the exhibition attempts to re-envision Diderot’s original idea of the ’encyclopédie’, which provided a memorable composite picture of his world.

This exhibition recalls Roland Barthes’ comparison of Diderot’s encyclopédie to a world’s fair, re-addressing his inevitably Euro-centric perspective. The selection of objects gives an expansive view, seeking to invoke a sense of wonder and humility before some of the technological, aesthetic and spiritual achievements of the world’s great cultures.

The works in The New Encyclopedists create unexpected connections. When we look West we face East. A limitless expression of humankind presents itself as we apprehend Louise Bourgeois’ “The Loved Hand,” (1967) reaching for the cobra on the Khat-headdress worn by a Ptolemaic Pharoah. We witness the exchanging glances between an 18th century French Venus and the portrait of a girl on a Roman jug from Tunisia. We find a camel from the Tang Dynasty, a Senufo horseman, a 17th century stag from Augsburg, an anthropomorphic figure created in India more than three thousand years ago, and a Bird-Headed Altar from the 4th millenium B.C.

Given our systems of political economy, what encyclopedic vision could embrace such human needs, such creative diversity?

As “new encyclopedists” we experience the world in a manner that goes beyond mere tourism to appreciate the range of peoples and knowledge across Prehistoric, Ancient, Pre-Columbian, Oceanic, African, Asian, European, Tribal and Contemporary worlds. Art Assets sees that globalisation is not just an economic phenomenon, but a cultural one.

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