With the Musée de La Poste closed, since late 2013, due to major renovation work (see article, also published in VARIABLE 31), the collections display, exhibitions, and museum activities continue elsewhere both in Paris, as well as other cities. The museum shop and the espace timbres, the last ones to leave the museum in January 2014, have been temporarily moved to new premises in Avenue du Maine, next to the Chemin de Montparnasse, just a few hundred meters from the museum.
	This year, the Musée de La Poste temporary exhibitions are being held in the Musée du Montparnasse, in the Chemin du Montparnasse (image below). This is a green alley, lined with showrooms and studios, built in the early twentieth century reusing the materials from the Exposition Universelle of 1900. In the Chemin, there is the old workshop of the Russian painter Marie Vassilieff, which was, during the First World War, a popular gathering place for the artistic community, with artists such as Picasso, Braque, Modigliani, Léger, Max Jacob, Cocteau, Matisse, ...

This is the place for the second temporary exhibition of the Musée de La Poste, outside its usual location. With the suggestive title of 'L'art fait ventre', the exhibition is organised around the relationships between art and food, with works exploring the aesthetic, social and commercial dimensions of food. The exhibition was opened on June 2nd 2014, and will end on September 20th.

Complementary to the exhibition, the museum has scheduled various shows, competitions, and artistic performances. Among them, the cantines-spectacles, which remembers the canteen operated by the Russian painter, next to her workshop, to help artists who remained in Paris during the war.

Since 2010, in addition to the definitive design that can be obtained throughout the year, L'ADRESSE Musée de La Poste releases, annually, one ATM design for the temporary exhibitions started in the months of May/June. In 2014, the fifth special vignette LISA is dedicated to the exhibition 'L'art fait ventre'. A special postmark was also prepared. (The previous releases for the exhibitions 'Joyaux philatéliques de l'Afrique, de l'Île Maurice et de la Réunion' (2010 - see article, and VARIABLE 17), 'Nils-Udo NATURE' (2011 - article and VARIABLE 21), 'Gleizes - Metzinger, du cubisme et après' (2012 - article and VARIABLE 25), and 'Chaissac - Dubuffet, entre plume et pinceau' (2013 - article and VARIABLE 29).

 

The new ATM issue is another composition by Philippe Rodier, the L'ADRESSE Musée de La Poste graphic designer, and is based on the exhibition poster. While we are used to Philippe Rodier’s very simple designs, it is also true that he is one of the few vignettes LISA designers that usually keeps in mind the printing done by postal kiosks, and has placed the design in light colours or has left free the central part of the label, for easy viewing of the face value indicators. The 'L'art fait ventre' ATM issue could be obtained from June 3rd 2014, as usual, only from the IER LISA 2 Évolution distributor installed in the new boutique du Musée de La Poste. The total printing for this design was 20,000 labels.

The maximum card (right) is made with a postcard depicting the work 'Oeufs sur le Plat sans le Plat / Eggs on a Plate without the Plate', an oil on canvas painted by Salvador Dalí in 1932