The Sunday Times - UK (2022-05-22)

22 May 22, 2022The Sunday Times

Travel

putting the spotlight on the

arts of non-European cultures,

anywhere from Greenland to

Oceania. Many of the African

masks and other pieces

displayed in the galleries

came from earlier collections

that inspired Picasso and his

contemporaries.

Details From £10pp; closed

on Mondays (quaibranly.fr)

JEU DE PAUME

It’s more than 150 years since

this gallery was first built on

the corner of the Tuileries

Gardens as an indoor court for

real tennis. After its collection

of impressionist works went

to the new Musée d’Orsay in

1986, it found fresh purpose as

a splendid exhibition venue

mainly for photography and

video art. Its architectural

twin across the park is the

Musée de l’Orangerie.

Details From £10pp; closed on

Mondays (jeudepaume.org)

LOUVRE

What to say about the world’s

most-visited museum? Well,

for one, if you want to avoid

the crowds, shut out the siren

call of the Mona Lisa and Venus

de Milo to spend time in the

quieter Richelieu wing, with its

focus on French and northern

European paintings. Then

there is the building itself:

underlying the unmatched

richness of the collections is

the Louvre’s long history as

a royal palace, right down to

its excavated foundations.

Details From £13pp; closed

on Tuesdays (louvre.fr)

Rory Goulding

Details Free; closed on

Mondays (mam.paris.fr)

FONDATION LOUIS VUITTON

One of the city’s newer art

spaces, this private venture

on the edge of the Bois de

Boulogne opened to both

fanfare and protest in 2014.

The building by Frank Gehry

is a shapeshifting mix of forms,

more transparent than his

Guggenheim Bilbao, letting in

GALLERIES IN PARIS

TOP

MUSÉE D’ORSAY
A gilded clock watches over
the main hall of this grandiose
former train station on the
Seine. Its collections pick up
where the Louvre leaves off,
mainly covering the years
from 1848 to 1914, when
France was home to just about
everyone who was anyone in
the art world. Impressionist
and post-impressionist works
are the standouts. Come for
Cézanne’s The Card Players,
Manet’s Luncheon on the
Grass, Van Gogh’s Starry Night,
Whistler’s Mother and more.
Details From £8.50pp; closed
on Mondays (musee-orsay.fr)

MUSÉE D’ART
MODERNE DE PARIS
The austere 1930s form of
the Palais de Tokyo is a less
obvious architectural
statement than the inside-out

Centre Pompidou, but the

collection of modern art that

it houses is the better for being

lesser known — and like most

museums run by the City of

Paris, there’s no charge to

see the permanent exhibits.

Stars include a whole room

dedicated to Matisse, vibrant

canvases by Robert Delaunay

and Raoul Dufy’s room-sized

and recently restored 1937

mural The Electricity Fairy.

views of the parkland setting.

Rotating collections and

headline exhibitions feature

the likes of Andy Warhol,

Louise Bourgeois, Jean-Michel

Basquiat and Olafur Eliasson.

Details From £14pp;

closed on Tuesdays

(fondationlouisvuitton.fr)

MUSÉE NISSIM

DE CAMONDO

In the well-heeled eighth

arrondissement is one of a

number of Parisian mansions

turned museums — although

few have the same poignancy

behind the finery. Founded by

a collector of 18th-century art

and furniture, the museum

was named in honour of his

son, who died in the First

World War; the family line

ended in the Holocaust. It

looks much as it would have

done originally, with Aubusson

tapestries and portraits by

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun.

Details From £10pp;

closed on Mondays and

Tuesdays (madparis.fr)

MUSÉE DU QUAI BRANLY

• JACQUES CHIRAC
  The name of this museum
  — combining its address
  beside the Eiffel Tower
  and the president whose
  pet project it was — gives
  no hint to its complex task:

The Seine in Paris; below, a Manet at Musée D’Orsay

A giant mural at Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris

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MICHAEL BROOKS, ROBERTHARDING/ALAMY; OLENA Z/GETTY IMAGES