Musée d'Orsay

The Musée d'Orsay (UK: /ˌmjuːzeɪ dɔːrˈseɪ/ MEW-zay dor-SAY, US: /mjuːˈzeɪ -/ mew-ZAY -⁠, French: [myze dɔʁsɛ]) is a museum in Paris, France, on the Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1914, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography. It houses the largest collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist masterpieces in the world, by painters including Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, Sisley, Gauguin, and Van Gogh. Many of these works were held at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume prior to the museum's opening in 1986. It is one of the largest art museums in Europe. Musée d'Orsay had more than 3.6 million visitors in 2019.[3][4]

This article is about the museum. For other uses, see D'Orsay (disambiguation).

Musée d'Orsay
Musée d'Orsay as seen from the Pont du Carrousel
Location of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris
Established1986
LocationRue de Lille 75343 Paris, France
Coordinates48°51′36″N 02°19′35″E
TypeArt museum, Design/Textile Museum, Historic site[1]
Visitors3.0 million (2009)[2]
  • Ranked 3rd nationally
  • Ranked 10th globally
DirectorSerge Lemoine
Public transit accessSolférino
Musée d'Orsay
Websitewww.musee-orsay.fr

History
The Musée d'Orsay as seen from the Passerelle Léopold-Sédar-Senghor
Musée d'Orsay Clock, Victor Laloux, Main Hall
The interior of the museum.

The museum building was originally a railway station, Gare d'Orsay, constructed for the Chemin de Fer de Paris à Orléans and finished in time for the 1900 Exposition Universelle to the design of three architects: Lucien Magne, Émile Bénard and Victor Laloux. It was the terminus for the railways of southwestern France until 1939.

By 1939 the station's short platforms had become unsuitable for the longer trains that had come to be used for mainline services. After 1939 it was used for suburban services and part of it became a mailing centre during World War II. It was then used as a set for several films, such as Kafka's The Trial adapted by Orson Welles, and as a haven for the Renaud–Barrault Theatre Company and for auctioneers, while the Hôtel Drouot was being rebuilt.

In 1970, permission was granted to demolish the station but Jacques Duhamel, Minister for Cultural Affairs, ruled against plans to build a new hotel in its stead. The station was put on the supplementary list of Historic Monuments and finally listed in 1978. The suggestion to turn the station into a museum came from the Directorate of the Museum of France. The idea was to build a museum that would bridge the gap between the Louvre and the National Museum of Modern Art at the Georges Pompidou Centre. The plan was accepted by Georges Pompidou and a study was commissioned in 1974. In 1978, a competition was organized to design the new museum. ACT Architecture, a team of three young architects (Pierre Colboc, Renaud Bardon and Jean-Paul Philippon), were awarded the contract which involved creating 20,000 square metres (220,000 sq ft) of new floorspace on four floors. The construction work was carried out by Bouygues.[5] In 1981, the Italian architect Gae Aulenti was chosen to design the interior including the internal arrangement, decoration, furniture and fittings of the museum. In July 1986, the museum was ready to receive its exhibits. It took 6 months to install the 2000 or so paintings, 600 sculptures and other works. The museum officially opened in December 1986 by then-president François Mitterrand.

From 2020 on, the Musée d’Orsay is scheduled to undergo a radical transformation over the next decade, funded in part by an anonymous US patron who donated €20 million to a building project known as Orsay Grand Ouvert (Orsay Wide Open). The gift was made via the American Friends of the Musées d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie.[6]

Musée d'Orsay seen from the right bank of the Seine river
Festival hall of the Musée d'Orsay

The square next to the museum displays six bronze allegorical sculptural groups in a row, originally produced for the Exposition Universelle:

Collection
Vincent van Gogh:
Starry Night
Arles, September 1888
Pierre-Auguste Renoir:
Bal du moulin de la Galette, 1876
Édouard Manet
The Luncheon on the Grass
1862-3
Gustave Courbet:
The Artist's Studio 1855
Paul Cézanne:
The Card Players 1894–1895
Paul Cézanne:
Apples and Oranges
circa 1899
William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Equality Before Death, 1848

Paintings: major painters and works represented

Sculptures

Major sculptors represented in the collection include Alfred Barye, François Rude, Jules Cavelier, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Émile-Coriolan Guillemin, Auguste Rodin, Paul Gauguin, Camille Claudel, Sarah Bernhardt and Honoré Daumier.

Other works

It also holds collections of:

  • architecture and decorative arts
  • photography

Selected collection highlights

Management

The Directors have been:

See also

References
  1. "Musée d'Orsay: About". ARTINFO. 2008. Retrieved 30 July 2008. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  2. "Exhibition and museum attendance figures 2009" (PDF). The Art Newspaper. London. April 2010. Retrieved 20 May 2010.
  3. "Paris facts". Paris Digest. 2018. Retrieved 16 September 2018.
  4. Gareth Harris (March 6, 2020), Anonymous €20m donation kickstarts Musée d’Orsay transformation The Art Newspaper.
  5. "Bouygues website: Musée d'Orsay". Bouygues.com. Archived from the original on 5 December 2008. Retrieved 20 June 2012.
  6. Gareth Harris (March 6, 2020), Anonymous €20m donation kickstarts Musée d’Orsay transformation The Art Newspaper.
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