Un musée révolutionnaire — Le musée des Monuments français d’Alexandre Lenoir — Le Louvre — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: April 7 → July 4, 2016

Dating from 1795, the Museum of French Monuments was France’s second national museum, coming in the wake of the Louvre, founded in 1793. It played a major part in the birth of the notion of heritage and the emergence of medieval history. However, it was closed in 1816 and its contents are currently to be found in institutions in France — the Louvre’s Department of Sculptures, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the basilica of Saint-Denis, the Musée de Cluny, Notre Dame, various churches in the Paris diocese — and abroad: mainly in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, but also in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

The exhibition recounts the pioneering achievement of Alexandre Lenoir as museum curator, exhibition designer, and fervent heritage protector. It also explores the establishment and history of the Museum of French Monuments, whose exhibition style had a powerful influence on the sensibility and the arts of the period.

Germain Pilon, Tombeau de Valentine Balbiani Courtesy Département des Sculptures, musée du Louvre © RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre) / Thierry Ollivier

Organized by: Geneviève Bresc-Bautier, Musée du Louvre, and Béatrice de Chancel-Bardelot, Musée de Cluny-Musée National du Moyen Âge.