New Museum – Pinacotheque de Paris

Why a picture of Fauchon at the beginning of a blog post on a museum? I like the graphic – Fauchon has good things to buy/eat – It is across the street from this new museum near the Place de la Madeleine.

The Pinacotheque is a new private museum in Paris established in 2007– its new space only opening in January 2011. We went to see the special exhibit of the treasures of the Romanovs but ended up finding the permanent collection to be quite interesting as well.

But first the exhibit – the theme was the birth of a museum. The Romanovs built one of the world’s finest art collections within a period of 200 years. The collection started with Peter I (Peter the Great) and continued with Catherine II, Alexander I, and finally Nicolas I. They built a modern museum – the Hermitage – which was opened to the public in 1805. The exhibit places the Hermitage as part of the rise of the modern museum – along with the Louvre, British Museum, Uffizi, etc.

The permanent collection is fascinating – more from the standpoint of how it is displayed. The style of the museum is called transversal – it abandons the traditional approach of displaying art by period, country, style, etc. It is more closely related to how an art collector would display a collection. There are themes of presentation – works by Monet, Van Dyk, Breughel, Pollock, and Modigliani hang side by side!

The art historian Marc Restellini is the inspiration and curator of the museum – he has shaken up the Paris art scene. His exhibitions are outselling those of the established state-run museums and without subsidies. As a result, he is not appreciated by the art establishment. According to an article in the British newspaper the Independent, several museums in Paris tried to stop the loan of pictures by Munch for a recent exhibit.

As he said in the article,

"The publicly owned exhibition spaces in Paris are firmly enclosed in their allotted periods and certainties," Mr Restellini said. "They have, poor things, to deal with all kinds of political pressures, financial pressures and a huge cultural bureaucracy. They have no interest in the transversal – in other words, in making connections outside their own domains.

But art does not fall into neat periods. Artists don't think that way. The public doesn't think that way. Artists draw their inspiration from different periods and approaches and then make a synthesis to inspire their own work. This is what you see in the work of Edvard Munch."

Restillini also individually lights each piece of art which is becoming more common around the museum world. It was quite obvious that the lighting was amazing. The museum is a must for anyone interested in art! It is a big hit with Parisians who are saturated with museums and art galleries!