Musée d'art moderne

 

Now that classes are over, most JYA-ers are crossing the final items off their Paris bucket lists and packing up their souvenirs.  One of the last stops for my friend Hazel was the Musée d'Art Moderne (11 avenue du Président Wilson, 16e).

 

The museum's permanent collection, which is free (woohoo!), includes numerous Cubist pieces by Braques and Picasso, Fauvist oeuvres by Matisse, and some rooms of Dada/Surrealist flights of fancy.  Some videographic works by Asian artists are on show in the basement.  My personal favorite was the Salle Dufy, where a huge mural (above) depicting great scientists and inventors (French and otherwise) covers the walls.  

The Palais de Tokyo is a luminous if somewhat sterile structure that was built for the International Exhibition of Arts and Technology of 1937.  The museum is situated in the eastern wing, while the western wing hosts an atelier for young artists in residence.

For a while the works on display were modern pieces that spilled over from the collection of the very full Petit Palais.  But with the accumulation of many pieces during the 1937 exhibition, including this baller neo-classical-meets-art-deco sideboard, the museum was given the green light and inaugurated as a distinct musée de la ville de Paris.