The Musée des Arts Décoratifs (, English: ''Museum of Decorative Arts'') is a museum in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, France, dedicated to the exhibition and preservation of the decorative arts. Located in the city’s 1st arrondissement, the museum occupies the Pavillon de Marsan, the north-western wing of the Palais du Louvre. With approximately one million objects in its collection, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs is the largest museum of decorative arts in continental Europe. It is one of three museums operated by the non-profit arts association MAD, founded in 1882.

Displays

The museum collection was founded in 1905 by members of the ''Union des Arts décoratifs'' ("Union of Decorative Arts"). The architect was Gaston Redon. It houses and displays furniture, interior design, altarpieces, religious paintings, ''objets d'arts'', tapestries, wallpaper, ceramics and glassware, plus toys from the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

to the present day. The museum's holdings range back to 13th-century

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

. Today's collection is primarily composed of French furniture, tableware, carpets such as those from Aubusson, porcelain such as that by the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres, and many glass pieces by René Lalique,

Émile Gallé Émile Gallé (; 4 May 1846 in Nancy, France, Nancy – 23 September 1904 in Nancy) was a French artist and designer who worked in glass, and is considered to be one of the major innovators in the French Art Nouveau movement. He was noted fo ...

and many others. It includes numerous works in the

Art Nouveau Art Nouveau ( ; ; ), Jugendstil and Sezessionstil in German, is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. It was often inspired by natural forms such as the sinuous curves of plants and ...

and Art Déco styles and modern examples by designers like Eileen Gray and Charlotte Perriand. Pieces by Camille Fauré can also be found in the permanent collection. The period rooms are of interest to the public, with examples including part of Jeanne Lanvin's house (decorated by Albert-Armand Rateau 884–1938in the early 1920s) at 16 rue Barbet-de-Jouy in Paris. Others are graphic artist

Eugène Grasset Eugène Samuel Grasset (; 25 May 1845 – 23 October 1917) 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 (, , ; or , ; ) is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Vaucluse department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of southeastern France. Located on the left bank of the river Rhône, the Communes of France, commune had a ...

. There is also the 1875 bedroom of courtesan Lucie Émilie Delabigne, purportedly the inspiration for the main character in Émile Zola's novel ''Nana'' (1880). There is a distinctive ceiling there, once owned by Jeanne Baptiste d'Albert de Luynes, mistress of the then duke of Savoy.

Exhibitions

Some of the museum's vast number of exhibitions have been influential. 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/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 The Victoria and Albert Museum (abbreviated V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

. It was also the inspiration for the Hewitt sisters' collection in the Cooper Union in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. However, due to many fine-art, publicity, fashion and design exhibitions mounted at the Paris museum, its focus has been diluted and caused its name, ''Musée des "Arts décoratifs"'', to become a misnomer. Thus, its name for popular use became MAD (''"mode, arts, design"'' or, in English, "fashion, arts, design") in January 2016, even though the acronym is the same as MAD (Museum of Arts and Design) in New York City. In 2021, the museum partnered with the Loewe Foundation and exhibited the finalists in the Loewe Craft Prize, which was won by Fanglu Lin that year.

Renovation

The ''Musée des Arts décoratifs'' was closed from 1996 to 2006 due to a renovation of the building and of about 6,000 works from the collection; the renovation cost €35 million (about $45 million in 2006). The museum reopened on 15 September 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 n Franceunderstand how to relate to paintings and sculpture in a museum, but they don't know how to interpret objects". Pierre-Alexis Dumas, a principal of

Hermès Hermès International S.A. ( , ) is a French Luxury goods, luxury fashion house established in 1837. It specializes in leather goods, silk goods, lifestyle accessories, home furnishings, perfumery, jewelry, watches and ready-to-wear. Since the ...

International and the president of the ''Fondation Hermès'', was elected president in 2015. He succeeded Bruno Roger.

References

Sources

* Anon. (1984). ''Chefs d'œuvre du Musée des Arts Décoratifs'', Paris: Musée des Arts Décoratifs, * Brunhammer, Yvonne (1992). ''Le beau dans l'utile: Un musée pour les arts décoratifs'', Paris: Gallimard, * Salmon, Béatrice (2006). ''Chefs-d'oeuvre du musée des Arts décoratifs'', Paris: Les Arts Décoratifs, * Rawsthorne, Alice. "A Paris Mecca of the decorative arts opens anew", ''International Herald Tribune'', September 3, 2006

External links