Musée des Monuments français

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View of the permanent exhibition (2008)

The Musée des Monuments français , temporarily Musée de Sculpture comparée , is a Paris architecture museum that is mainly dedicated to the monuments of France. It was first founded in 1795 by Alexandre Lenoir using the objects that had been confiscated during the French Revolution . In 1816 it was closed again. It was re-established in 1879 at the work of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc in the Palais du Trocadéro with the remains and a large collection of plaster casts, initially under the name Musée de sculpture comparée , from 1937 again under the historical name. Today the museum is located in the Palais de Chaillot .

history

Jean-Lubin Vauzelle: The entrance hall of the Musée des Monuments français (around 1795)
Facade attached by Lenoir to the Petits-Augustins convent, now ENSBA

The founding of Alexandre Lenoir (1795)

When numerous historical monuments - hated symbols of the aristocracy and clergy - were exposed to vandalism and decay during the French Revolution , the archaeologist Alexandre Lenoir, as a member of the Commission des Arts, campaigned for the preservation of important works of art. Numerous rescued works of art were brought to the Hôtel des Nesle and the former convent of the Petits Augustins , which served as depots. Lenoir was appointed director in 1791. In 1795 he finally succeeded in opening the Musée des Antiquités et Monuments français ( Musée des Monuments français for short ) to the public in the Petits Augustins . It was the first public museum that followed a strictly chronological order in its presentation and only exhibited works of art from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in France. Among other things, some tombs from the abbey church of Saint-Denis , which served as the burial place of the French kings, were added. By and large, these provided the chronological structure, but were changed, supplemented and in some cases merged into uniform spatial arrangements with other works of art, so that completely new contexts emerged. The rooms were also adapted to the works of art with (partly newly made) historical furnishings, a concept that influenced many museum buildings of the 19th century. The bones of famous French poets, such as the tragic lovers of the Middle Ages, Peter Abelards and Heloisas , as well as Molières , La Fontaines , Boileaus and Mabillons, were buried in an inner courtyard of the old monastery, which Lenoir called Jardin Elysée . This mythical and atmospheric courtyard developed into a cult site of early French Romanticism .

Since the scientific standards and understanding of medieval art began to change in the general public after 1800, Lenoir's (sometimes crude) conservation methods met with increasing criticism, for example in Quatremère de Quincy's Considérations morales . After the fall of Napoleon and the return of stolen works of art from the Louvre, Louis XVIII. In 1816, in the sense of the restoration , to close the museum and to restitute its objects to the previous private and public owners, against which Lenoir defended himself with a defense. The graves in the Jardin Élysée were also reburied. The remaining pieces were scattered: some came to the Louvre in 1824 (in the Galerie d'Angoulême, where they were presented as the Musée de la sculpture française ), and some in 1836 to the Musée de l'Histoire de France in Versailles . The École des Beaux-Arts , which also housed the museum's plaster cast collection, was set up in the former museum building .

The creation of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (1882)

In 1878 Eugène Viollet-le-Duc suggested exhibiting the remains of the Alexandre Lenoir collection in the Palais du Trocadéro , which had been empty since the 1878 World's Fair . Only one year later, on October 29, 1879 , his proposal was accepted by the government , with the support of Education Minister Jules Ferry , and the future Musée de sculpture comparée was compiled and planned. The museum finally opened its doors to the public on May 28, 1882; it initially consisted of only four halls. In 1886 three more halls were added. The associated library finally opened in 1889.

At the same time, from 1882 to the mid-1920s, the opposite side of the Palais du Trocadéro housed the Musée Indo-chinois, under the direction of Louis Delaporte , which particularly attracted attention for the plaster cast collection of Angkor Wat . Delaportes Museum drew valuable suggestions for architectural presentation from Viollet-le-Ducs Museum and thus entered into a kind of transcultural dialogue with this museum.

In 1935 the Palais du Trocadéro was partly demolished and partly heavily rebuilt to make way for the new Palais de Chaillot for the 1937 World's Fair . In the new building and under the new old name, the museum expanded in size. In terms of its exhibition concept and museology , it was one of the forerunners of its time, thanks primarily to the director and archaeologist Paul Deschamps (1888–1974).

A major fire on the roof of the Palais de Chaillot destroyed on 22/23. July 1997 numerous rooms and exhibits of the Musée des Monuments français as well as the then neighboring Musée du Cinéma . The planned reopening was postponed for years. After various discarded plans, the building was finally renovated and a new exhibition designed under the direction of Jean-François Bodin . On September 15, 2007, the museum reopened as part of the newly founded Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine .

Today's museum

The Palais de Chaillot

The museum now takes up over 8000 m² of the Paris wing in the Palais de Chaillot and extends over three floors. The ground floor, divided into the Davidoud Gallery and the Carlu Gallery , is dedicated to plaster casts . It shows plaster models of works of art from the 12th to the 18th centuries. The first floor houses the Galerie d'architecture moderne et contemporaine , it is mainly dedicated to the French architectural history from 1850 to 2001 and shows numerous architectural models and historical documents. There is also the full-size , two-storey replica of an apartment in the Cité radieuse by Le Corbusier in Marseille, built in 1952 .

In the pavilion at the end of the building, over two floors, there are copies of monumental historical frescoes from the 12th to the 16th century. On the second floor there are paintings of the French Romanesque in 30 smaller, chapel-like rooms, on the third floor those of the Gothic and Renaissance . You will be accompanied by the collection of copies of historical church windows . The library on the first floor of the pavilion holds around 45,000 volumes, making it one of the largest freely accessible architecture libraries. There are also rooms for temporary exhibitions.

The collection

Glance into the cast collection

The plaster cast collection today consists of over 6000 casts of sculptural monuments from all eras. There are casts of ancient, Italian, German and Swiss works, but the focus is on French sculptures from the Romanesque and Gothic periods . The cast collection has its origins in the casting workshop of the Louvre, founded in 1794 . In the 19th century, the architect Viollet-le-Duc also contributed a very large part, who, at the suggestion of the writer Prosper Mérimée, used the restoration construction sites he was in charge of to have numerous plaster casts made there at the same time, especially of the architectural sculptures. Paul Deschamps, director since 1927, made another effort between 1938 and 1956 to expand the stock of plaster casts. He wanted to create a museum of "monumental art"; To this end, he expanded the collection of fresco copies, had original- size copies of historic stained glass windows made and enlarged the collection of architectural models .

Copies of the following works are on display:

List of directors

(incomplete)

  • 1903-1927: Camille Enlart
  • 1927–1959: Paul Deschamps
  • 1992-1998: Guy Cogeval
  • 2004–2008: Marie-Paule Arnauld
  • 2009–2010: Hervé Lemoine
  • 2010 – today: Laurence de Finance

literature

supporting documents

  1. ^ Franck Beaumont: Alexandre Lenoir. Le sauveur des tombeaux des Rois de France, December 14, 2011.
  2. ↑ Histoire du musée ( Memento of the original from December 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.citechaillot.fr
  3. ↑ Michael Falser: From Gaillon to Sanchi, from Vézelay to Angkor Wat. The Musée Indo-chinois in Paris: A Transcultural Perspective on Architectural Museums . In: RIHA Journal 0071 (June 19, 2013).
  4. ↑ Histoire du musée ( Memento of the original from December 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.citechaillot.fr
  5. ^ Fire in the Palais de Chaillot in Paris. Millions in damage to the museum palace at the Eiffel Tower, in: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, July 24, 1997, p. 15.
  6. ↑ Presentation générale de la Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, pp. 14-23. Bibliothèque
  7. ↑ Presentation générale de la Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, p. 14. Les moulages , Les vitraux ( Memento of the original of January 27, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.citechaillot.fr
  8. ^ Paul Deschamps (1888–1974), in: Marc Thibout: Bibliothèque de l'école des chartes . Paris 1975, Vol. 133.2, pp. 423-429.
  9. ^ Marie-Paule Arnauld, nouvelle directrice du musée des monuments français, 5 May 2004.
  10. ↑ Archives de France | Hervé Lemoine. In: www.archivesdefrance.culture.gouv.fr. Retrieved August 17, 2015 .
  11. ↑ Cité de l'architecture & du patrimoine - Fonctionnement. In: www.citechaillot.fr. Retrieved August 17, 2015 .

Web links

Commons : Musée des Monuments français  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 48 ° 51 ′ 47.5 "  N , 2 ° 17 ′ 22.6"  E