The world’s largest impressionist collection in a beaux-arts railway station
Modern art’s greatest innovations from the mid-19th century to the outbreak of the First World War were born in France. This museum—opened in 1986 in a spectacular beaux-arts former railway station built along the Seine for the Exposition Universelle of 1900—comprehensively surveys those accomplishments. The impressionist and post-impressionist collection displayed here is unequaled worldwide, with seminal paintings by masters including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cézanne and Chaïm Soutine. The museum also stages major special exhibitions. Starting in 2025, a two-year redesign of the building and the collection displays aims to recontextualize these great works in the light of the 19th-century political, social and cultural upheavals that underpinned their production. The Musée d’Orsay will remain open throughout.
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