Musée national des Monuments Français
The Musée national des Monuments Français (English: National Museum of French Monuments) is today a museum of plaster casts of French monuments located in the Palais de Chaillot, 1, place du Trocadéro et du 11 Novembre, Paris, France. It now forms part of the Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, and is open daily except Tuesday. An admission fee is charged.
The museum's name evokes the earlier Musée des Monuments français opened in 1795 by Alexandre Lenoir, which displayed actual monuments of French Medieval and Renaissance art, removed from churches and châteaux after the French Revolution. Lenoir's museum remained open until the Bourbon Restoration of 1816, and was highly influential on French taste, making the medievalism of the Troubadour style popular, and providing inspiration to its artists.
History
The architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc suggested gathering reproductions of French sculpture and architecture at a single site in the palais du Trocadéro in 1879, in buildings left vacant after the Exposition universelle in 1878. His proposal was accepted on 4 November. Edmond Du Sommerard would be designated on 20 December to form the musée de la Sculpture comparée. The institution opened its four rooms to the public on 28 May 1882, three more in 1886 and finally its library and foundational documents in 1889.
The
Today
It occupies the aile Paris of the Palais de Chaillot and is made up of three galleries. The galerie Davioud (1878) and galerie Carlu (1937) form a gallery of plaster casts. The upper gallery serves as an exhibition space for modern and contemporary architectural models. Wall paintings and stained glass windows are located at the end of the modern and contemporary architecture gallery; they are shown on two levels. There is also a library as well as rooms for temporary exhibitions.
Collections
It contains about 6,000 casts of sculptures of all periods including ancient Greece, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland, but with a strong emphasis on French sculptures of the Romanesque and Gothic periods. It also contains scale models of buildings, copies of architectural elements, sculpture, frescoes, and stained glass from French churches and châteaux, as well as a collection of about 200,000 photographs. Most casts were made in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Of particular interest is the Galerie Davioud, which displays casts of sculptures from
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Galerie Davioud, romanesque Languedoc room
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Galerie Davioud, gothic room
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Galerie Davioud
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Galerie Carlu, Provence
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Galerie Carlu, XVIth c.
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Gallery of modern and contemporary architecture
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Gallery of paintings, cupola of Cahors cathedral
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Gallery of paintings and stained glasses, crypt
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Temporary exhibitions galleries
See also
References
External links
- Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine
- Pariserve entry
- Gralon description
- Paris.org entry
- Paris Update article, September 26, 2007
- International Herald Tribune, "France's Monuments Museum: A History of Change", January 8, 1994