Musée d'Orsay

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Musée d'Orsay as seen from the northwest
Musée d'Orsay, interior view

The Musée d'Orsay is an art museum in the 7th arrondissement of Paris . It is located on the south bank of the Seine opposite the Tuileries Gardens . The building was originally a train station: the Gare d'Orsay . It was built by Victor Laloux on the occasion of the world exhibition in 1900 and was used for long-distance traffic to south-west France until 1939. The decision to convert the station into a museum was made in 1977 on the initiative of French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing . The renovation was managed by the architecture firm ACT Architecture until the Musée d'Orsay opened in 1986.

In the Musée d'Orsay, more than 4,000 exhibits are shown on 16,000 square meters. The paintings , sculptures , graphics , photographs , works of arts and crafts and designs and the architecture originate from a few exceptions from the period between 1848 and 1914. Between the inauguration in December 1986 and December 2005 visited more than 51 million people, the Musée d'Orsay . With around 3.8 million visitors annually, the museum is one of the attractions of the city of Paris.

history

The site on which the Musée d'Orsay is located today had an eventful history even before the current building was erected. At the beginning of the 17th century there were parts of the garden of Queen Margaret of Valois . After her death in 1615, the garden was parceled out and sold, town houses were built and the port of La Grenouillière on the banks of the Seine. There in 1708 the Prévôt des marchands Charles Boucher d'Orsay had a quay built, which was later named Quai d'Orsay after him . To the west of the site, the Hôtel de Salm was built in the 1780s and is now the seat of the Legion of Honor . From 1838 on, the Palais d'Orsay , built by Jean-Charles Bonnard and Jacques Lacornée , was the site of the present museum , seat of the Cour des Comptes (Court of Auditors) and the Conseil d'Etat (Council of State), as well as a cavalry barracks to the east . During the Paris Commune in 1871, the Palais d'Orsay burned down. Its ruins stood in place for more than a quarter of a century until the station was built.

Gare d'Orsay

The Gare d'Orsay
View of the Seine from the roof of the museum

In order to build a new, central terminus for Paris in the area, the French state gave the property to the Compagnie du chemin de fer de Paris à Orléans on April 2, 1897 for 10.5 million francs . The railway company commissioned the architects Emile Bénard , Lucien Magne and Victor Laloux with designs under the stipulation that the station should be integrated into the elegant architectural environment. In the following year, the design submitted by Laloux was selected and construction work began. On July 14, 1900, the Gare d'Orsay was opened on the occasion of the world exhibition taking place in Paris and was considered a very modern train station at that time.

Mainly the train traffic to the southwest of France ran through the Gare d'Orsay. In addition, the hotel in the train station also developed into a meeting place for clubs and parties that organized banquets and conferences there. Long-distance traffic was discontinued in 1939; Only connections to the suburbs were offered, as the electrified trains had become too long for the platforms of the Gare d'Orsay. During the Second World War , the station was used as a dispatch center for parcels to prisoners of war. In 1945 with the end of the war, the Gare d'Orsay was the train station where the survivors of the concentration camps arrived.

After the war, only the hotel was used as before. For example, the poet Ivan Goll spent the last years of his life there. In 1958, Charles de Gaulle announced his return to power at a press conference in the hotel's ballroom. The station was also used as a backdrop for films. In the early 1960s, for example, director Orson Welles shot his 1962 film The Trial, based on the book of the same name by Franz Kafka, in these rooms. In addition, the theater group around Jean-Louis Barrault stayed there for a few years . During the construction of the new Hôtel Drouot from 1976 to 1980, the auctions of this auction house took place temporarily in the context of the former train station.

Reorientation and decision for the museum

After the hotel in the Gare d'Orsay was also closed on January 1, 1973, considerations arose as to whether the building should continue to be used or be demolished in order to rebuild the area. A new hotel building was considered. Due to the steadily increasing interest in the 19th century, the Gare d'Orsay was included in the supplementary monument register on March 8, 1973, which encouraged considerations to establish a museum in the building. This year, the management of the museums of France was planning to use the old station building as an exhibition space for art from the second half of the 19th century. This idea was also supported by the fact that a unique museum complex was to be created together with the neighboring Louvre , Musée de l'Orangerie and Grand Palais . On October 22, 1977, it was decided to convert the Gare d'Orsay into a museum on the initiative of French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing . The following year the building was also listed as a historical monument .

Musée d'Orsay

Hall in the Musée d'Orsay

In the following year, the Musée d'Orsay was founded to direct the construction work and realize the structure of the museum. The renovation, which was to preserve the architecture of the Laloux building, was carried out from 1979 under the direction of the architects Rennaud Bardon , Jean-Paul Philippon and Pierre Colboc of the ACT-Architecture office . They had previously prevailed against five competing designs. The interior of the Musée d'Orsay was designed by the architect Gae Aulenti . On December 1, 1986, the Musée d'Orsay was inaugurated by the French President François Mitterrand . Eight days later, it was finally made available to the public.

Until 1994 the Musée d'Orsay was directed by Françoise Cachin , whose successor Henri Loyrette held office until 2001. During the term of office of Serge Lemoine , who took over the post of director in 2001, further renovations took place in 2002 and 2003.

architecture

Restored station clock

The Gare d'Orsay was built by Victor Laloux for the connection between Paris and Orléans in connection with the World Exhibition in 1900 . Within a few decades, however, the platforms proved to be too short as the city grew, which required longer and longer trains . The station was closed in 1939 and classified as a historic building in 1978.

Under the direction of the architect Gae Aulenti , the station building was carefully converted into a museum from 1980 to 1986 while preserving the old structure . The main hall was largely exposed. Museum halls covered by terraces were built on both sides . Old ornaments made of iron and stucco were exposed again. The existing glass roof was used to create a bright, large gallery. In addition to the large main hall, dark and light side galleries were created on both sides in the basement and mezzanine. At the height of the roof vault, on the front side and on the long side facing the Seine river, there are further exhibition rooms. Particularly sensitive works of art are placed in darker places in the museum.

collection

François Pompon : The polar bear

The Musée d'Orsay shows paintings , sculptures , works of handicraft and design , graphics and photographs , models, components and designs of architecture as well as furniture . The key dates of the works included in the collection were set at around 1848 (beginning of the Second Republic ) and 1914 (beginning of the First World War ). The collection of French impressionists is unique in the world . But the other works of almost all styles of the period mentioned and many individual artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries are very extensive and of outstanding quality.

Provenance

The original holdings of the Musée d'Orsay consisted of various previous collections or parts thereof from other museums, the history of which therefore began long before the Musée d'Orsay was founded. The fund of the Musée du Jeu de Paume , whose building was transferred to another purpose, was taken over. The remaining works were mainly taken from the collections of the Louvre and the Musée National d'Art Moderne , founded in 1976 .

  1. The Musée du Jeu de Paume owned an extensive collection of paintings, sculptures and drawings by the French Impressionists.
  2. The Louvre donated works by artists born after 1820.
  3. From the Musée national d'art modern Center Georges-Pompidou , the works of artists born up to 1870 were given to the Orsay Museum.

The predetermined breaking point of the division is the year of birth of the artist: with exceptions before 1820 at the Louvre, after 1870 at the Center Georges-Pompidou. This chronological division already poses a basic problem in the national museum landscape, since collections were sometimes torn apart at inappropriate points due to a rigid temporal break, and stylistic features and commonalities received too little attention.

Examples of exhibited works of art

List of exhibited artists

literature

  • Françoise Bayle: Mieux comprendre la peinture à Orsay , ISBN 2-85495-184-0
  • Peter J. Gärtner (Eds.), Martina Padberg, Birgit Sander, Christiane Stukenbrock: Musée d'Orsay . Ulmann & Könemann, 2007. ISBN 978-3-8331-2940-7
  • Ernst Seidl: A note on the building history of the Gare d'Orsay in Paris , in: Architectura, 22/1992, pp. 179–192
  • Stefan Vockrodt: From the station palace to the art museum: Gare d'Orsay . In: Railways in Paris = Railway History Special 2 (2015). ISBN 978-3-937189-94-9 , p. 38.

Movie

  • The Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Documentary, France, 2011, 84 min., Written and directed by Bruno Ulmer, production: Ladybirds Films, Musée d'Orsay, arte France, first broadcast: January 8, 2012 by arte, arte dossier .

Web links

Commons : Musée d'Orsay  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter J. Gärtner (eds.), Martina Padberg, Birgit Sander, Christiane Stukenbrock: Musée d'Orsay . Ulmann & Könemann, 2007. page 27.
  2. ^ Mathieu, Caroline: Orsay. From a station to a museum. Paris, 2010-11. P. 4.
  3. ↑ History of the site on musee-orsay.fr, access on 11 July 2008
  4. ↑ Ministère des travaux publics. Recueil des lois et conventions relatives aux chemins de fer du Nord, de l'Est, d'Orléans, de Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée et du Midi. 1883 à 1910. Paris 1911. p. 361.
  5. ^ Reason for the new station building on musee-orsay.fr, accessed on July 11, 2008
  6. ↑ Peter J. Gärtner (eds.), Martina Padberg, Birgit Sander, Christiane Stukenbrock: Musée d'Orsay . Ulmann & Könemann, 2007. page 15.

Coordinates: 48 ° 51 ′ 36 "  N , 2 ° 19 ′ 35"  E