Musée des Arts Décoratifs
Encyclopedia
Museum
A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...
of the decorative arts and design
Design
Design as a noun informally refers to a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system while “to design” refers to making this plan...
, 107 rue de Rivoli, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
1er, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. It is part of Les Arts Décoratifs
Les Arts Décoratifs
Les Arts Décoratifs is a private, non-profit museum of decorative arts located in Paris, France.The museum dates to 1882, when collectors with an interest in the applied arts formed the initial organization. For many years it was known as the Union centrale des Arts décoratifs , but in December...
.
The museum
Located in the Louvre museum's western wing, known as the Pavillon de Marsan, the museum was founded in 1905 by members of the Union des Arts Décoratifs. The architect was Gaston RedonGaston Redon
Gaston Redon was a French architect, teacher, and graphic artist. Redon was born in Bordeaux, Aquitaine to a prosperous family, the younger brother of Odilon Redon. Gaston attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in the atelier of Louis-Jules André, and took the Prix de Rome for architecture in 1883...
. It houses and displays furniture, interior design, altar pieces, religious paintings, objets d'arts, tapestries, wallpaper, ceramics and glassware, plus toys from the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
to the present day.
The collection is primarily composed of French furniture, tableware, carpets such as those from Aubusson
Aubusson, Creuse
Aubusson is a commune in the Creuse department in the Limousin region in central France.-Geography:...
, porcelain such as that by the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres
Manufacture nationale de Sèvres
The manufacture nationale de Sèvres is a Frit porcelain porcelain tendre factory at Sèvres, France. Formerly a royal, then an imperial factory, the facility is now run by the Ministry of Culture.-Brief history:...
, and a large number of glass pieces by René Lalique
René Lalique
René Jules Lalique was a French glass designer known for his creations of perfume bottles, vases, jewellery, chandeliers, clocks and automobile hood ornaments. He was born in the French village of Ay on 6 April 1860 and died 5 May 1945...
, Émile Gallé
Émile Gallé
Émile Gallé was a French artist who worked in glass, and is considered to be one of the major forces in the French Art Nouveau movement.- Biography :...
and many others. It includes numerous works in the Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
and Art Déco
Art Deco
Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...
styles and modern examples by designers like Eileen Gray
Eileen Gray
Kathleen Eileen Moray Gray was an Irish furniture designer and architect and a pioneer of the Modern Movement in architecture.- Biography :...
and Charlotte Perriand
Charlotte Perriand
Charlotte Perriand , was a French architect and designer. Her work aimed to create functional living spaces in the belief that better design helps in creating a better society...
. However, the museum's deep holdings range back to 13th-century Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
.
Of interest to the public are the period rooms. Examples include part of Jeanne Lanvin
Jeanne Lanvin
Jeanne-Marie Lanvin was a French fashion designer and the founder of the Lanvin fashion house.One of the most influential designers of the 1920s and '30s, Jeanne Lanvin's skillful use of intricate trimmings, virtuoso embroideries and beaded decorations in clear, light, floral colors became a...
's house (decorated by Albert-Armand Rateau (1884–1938) in the early 1920s) at 16 rue Barbet-de-Jouy in Paris. Others are graphic artist Eugène Grasset
Eugène Grasset
Eugène Samuel Grasset was a Swiss decorative artist who worked in Paris, France in a variety of creative design fields during the Belle Époque. He is considered a pioneer in Art Nouveau design.-Biography:...
's dining room of 1880, and the 1752 Gold Cabinet of Avignon
Avignon
Avignon is a French commune in southeastern France in the départment of the Vaucluse bordered by the left bank of the Rhône river. Of the 94,787 inhabitants of the city on 1 January 2010, 12 000 live in the ancient town centre surrounded by its medieval ramparts.Often referred to as the...
. And, peculiar to a French museum it seems, there is the 1875 bedroom of courtesan Lucie Émilie Delabigne, purportedly the inspiration for the main character in Émile Zola
Émile Zola
Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...
's novel Nana (1880).
There is a famous ceiling there once owned by the famous Jeanne Baptiste d'Albert de Luynes
Jeanne Baptiste d'Albert de Luynes
Jeanne Baptiste d'Albert de Luynes, comtesse de Verrue was a French noblewoman and the mistress of Victor Amadeus II of Sardinia.-Biography:...
, mistress of the then duke of Savoy
Victor Amadeus II of Sardinia
Victor Amadeus II was Duke of Savoy from 1675 to 1730. He also held the titles of marquis of Saluzzo, duke of Montferrat, prince of Piedmont, count of Aosta, Moriana and Nizza. Louis XIV organised his marriage in order to maintain French influence in the Duchy but Victor Amadeus soon broke away...
.
Some of the museum's vast number of exhibitions has been distinguished. Yvonne Brunhammer, a curator and then director of the museum for over four decades from the early 1950s and the person who rediscovered Eileen Gray, organized the 1966 exhibition, "Les Années '25': Art Déco/Bauhaus
Bauhaus
', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...
/Stijl Esprit Nouveau". The exhibition served to coin "Art Déco", the term that came to describe design between the World Wars, particularly French modern design.
The museum is somewhat on a par with similar and venerable decorative-arts and design-focused institutions such as the more international Victoria and Albert Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and was the inspiration for the Hewitt sisters' collection in the Cooper Union
Cooper Union
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly referred to simply as Cooper Union, is a privately funded college in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States, located at Cooper Square and Astor Place...
(the ancestor of the no-longer-affiliated Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
Cooper–Hewitt, National Design Museum, a subsidiary of the Smithsonian Institution, is the United States' national museum of design history and contemporary design and the only museum in the U.S. whose collection is solely focused on contemporary and historic design...
) in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. However, due to the large number of fine-art exhibitions mounted at the Paris museum, its focus has been diluted and caused its name—Musée des "Art Decoratifs"—to be a misnomer.
The Musée des Arts Décoratifs was shuttered from 1996 due to a renovation of the building and of 6,000 or so works from the collection; the renovation cost €35 million (about $45 million in 2006). The museum reopened September 15, 2006. Béatrice Salmon, the current director and overseer of the restoration, has called the collection "the history of French taste and of the decorative arts and design in France" and has suggested: "People [in France] understand how to relate to paintings and sculpture in a museum, but they don't know how to interpret objects" (Rawsthorn, International Herald Tribune, September 3, 2006).