Hello Expats,   

On this coming 1st Sunday of the month of February 2012, we’re heading to the musée d’Orsay. Please confirm on time because the number of people to attend is limited.

The Nouvel ORSAY   The renovation of the museum

As the end of 2009 approached, the muse d’Orsay launched the museographic renovation of its Impressionist and Post-Impressionist galleries (located on the upper floor), as well as the four levels of the "Pavillon amont" that lead to it. A better display of artworks, larger exhibition areas and greater comfort for visitors, ensuring better circulation and more security, such are the aims of the works that continued throughout 2010. The lightning and the colour of the walls behind the paintings are the object of particular attention.

A new circuit in the museum

This has also been an opportunity to review the general circuit within the museum and give it greater coherence: Impressionism (Manet, Degas, Monet, Cézanne, Renoir, Sisley...) on the 5th floor in a renovated gallery under the glass canopy, Post-Impressionism (Van Gogh, Gauguin, the school of Pont-Aven, Cross, Seurat, the Douanier Rousseau) on the middle level, on the side of the Rue de Lille, in rooms that have also been renovated, the large Nabi decors and foreign schools of decorative arts in the "Pavillon amont". This new display ensures a better distribution of visitors in the museum. The columns gallery, rooms 42 to 46, devoted to Post-Impressionism, has been transformed into temporary exhibition rooms.

The site (in the past),

The rue de Lille was once the central lane of the garden belonging to Henri IV's famous queen, Marguerite de Valois. On her death in 1615, the property was sold by lots, and private mansions continued to build up the neighbourhood, while on the banks of the Seine a port known as the Grenouillière served as a resting place for lumber barges and other cargo. The construction of the Quai d'Orsay began in 1708 near the Pont Royal, and was completed a century later under Napoleon I's Empire. The aristocratic vocation of the neighbourhood was already well established at the end of the 18th century, when the Hôtel de Salm (today the Musée de la Légion d'honneur) was built, between 1782 and 1788.

During the 19th century, two buildings stood upon the site of the future Orsay station: the Cavalry barracks and the Palais d'Orsay, built between 1810 and 1838 successively by Jean-Charles Bonnard and Jacques Lacornée. Although the Palais had originally been planned for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it eventually housed the Cour des Comptes (Court of Accounts) and the Conseil d'Etat (State Council). During the violent upheaval known as the Paris Commune in 1871, the entire neighbourhood was burnt down. For thirty years, the ruins of the Palais d'Orsay served as reminders of the horrors of civil war.

 More info on: http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/overview.html