Musée d'Orsay

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Musée d'Orsay
Established 1986
Location Rue de Lille, 75343 Paris, France
Visitor figures 2,590,000 (2004) [1]
Director Serge Lemoine
Website www.musee-orsay.fr
Vincent Van Gogh: Starry Night Over the Rhone, painted in September 1888 at Arles
Vincent Van Gogh: Starry Night Over the Rhone, painted in September 1888 at Arles
Paul Cézanne: Apples and Oranges, circa 1899
Paul Cézanne: Apples and Oranges, circa 1899

The Musée d'Orsay (in English: The Orsay Museum) is a museum in Paris, France, on the left bank of the Seine, housed in the former Orsay railway station. It holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1914, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography, and is probably best known for its extensive collection of impressionist masterpieces by popular painters such as Monet and Renoir. Many of these works were held at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume previous to the museum's opening in 1986.

Contents

[edit] History

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 center during World War II. The station's hotel closed on 1 January 1973.

In 1977 the French Government decided to convert the station to a museum and it was opened by President François Mitterrand on 1 December 1986. ACT Architecture (Renaud Bardon, Pierre Colboc and Jean-Paul Philippon) were designated to work on this conversion.

[edit] Directors

  • Françoise Cachin: 1986–1994
  • Henri Loyrette: 1994–2001
  • Serge Lemoine: 2001–present

[edit] Collection

[edit] Major painters

[edit] Major sculptors

François Rude, Jules Cavelier, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Auguste Rodin, Paul Gauguin, Camille Claudel and Honoré Daumier.

[edit] Other works

It also holds collections of:

  • architecture and decorative arts
  • photography

[edit] External links

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