Musée d’Orsay exhibitions head west in 2010
Starting in November 2009, the Musée d’Orsay will begin refurbishments in anticipation of the Musée’s 25th anniversary in 2011. Over 200 works are heading to San Francisco, where they will be on view at the de Young Museum from May 2010 to January 2011.

Tiffany Exhibit opens at the Musee du Luxembourg
For the first time since the 1900 World’s Fair, the works of American glass master Louis Comfort Tiffany are once again on display in Paris. A tribute to Tiffany’s life and work, “Tiffany: Color and Light” will be shown at the Musée du Luxembourg through January 17, 2010. The 8,500 square-foot exhibit features approximately 160 objects, including blown glass lamps, lead-glass windows, vases, mosaics, bronzes, and jewelry.

The New Festival kicks off at Centre Pompidou
The Centre Pompidou just launched The New Festival—a five-week celebration of new artists and emerging art forms. The festival, which runs through November 23, 2009, is hosting an array of daily events—exhibitions, shows, conferences, screenings, and concerts.

2009 Exhibitions
Exhibition highlights for this year include two Picasso exhibitions, one in Antibes starting late March and the once-in-a-lifetime Picasso-Cezanne exhibition in Aix-en-Provence, through September 27, which includes the possibility upon reservation, to visit the nearby Chateau de Vauvenargue. It is owned by Catherine Hutin, daughter of Jacqueline Picasso and it is where Picasso lived and worked and where he is buried. It will be open to the public for the duration of the exhibition.

SAN FRANCISCO — The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Musée d’Orsay jointly announce two consecutive special exhibitions, Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay and Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay which will be on view at the de Young Museum for a combined eight months beginning in May 2010 and ending in January 2011. Each exhibition will include approximately 100 paintings from the Musée d’Orsay’s permanent collection and highlights the work of nearly 40 artists including Cézanne, Degas, Gauguin, Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Rousseau, Seurat, Sisley, Toulouse-Lautrec, van Gogh and Vuillard. The Musée d’Orsay will loan the exhibitions while it undergoes a partial closure for refurbishment and reinstallation in anticipation of the Musée’s 25th anniversary in 2011. The de Young will be the only museum in the world to host both exhibitions.

“These two exhibitions present a rare and unique opportunity for Americans to see the evolution and incubation of the Impressionist style from the collection of the most important repository of French 19th and early 20th century art — the Musée d’Orsay,” says John E. Buchanan, director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. “These exhibitions give us the opportunity to share with visitors some of the most seminal works of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art that they would only be able to see in Paris or in an art history book as the likelihood of them traveling en masse again is slim.”

The first exhibition, Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay opens in the Herbst special exhibition galleries at the de Young on May 22, 2010 and runs through September 6, 2010. This exhibition puts forth nearly 100 works by the famous masters who called France their home during the mid-19th century and from whose midst arose one of the most original and recognizable of all artistic styles, Impressionism. This exhibition begins with paintings by naturalist artists such as Bougereau and Courbet and presents American expatriate James McNeil Whistler’s Arrangement in Gray and Black, known to many as “Whistler’s Mother.” Early work by Manet, Monet, Renoir and Sisley are on view as well as a selection of Degas’ paintings that depict images of the ballet, the racetrack and life in “la Belle Époque.” Notable works in this exhibition include:

• The Fife Player by Edouard Manet (1866)
• Family Reunion by Frédéric Bazille (1867)
• Arrangement in Gray and Black No. 1 or Portrait of the Artist’s Mother by James McNeil Whistler (1871)
• The Birth of Venus by William Adolphe Bouguereau (1879)
• The Cradle by Berthe Morisot (1872)
• Saint-Lazare Station by Claude Monet (1877)
• The Swing by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1876)
• Rue Montorgueil, Paris. Festival of June 30, 1878 by Claude Monet
• Racehorses Before the Stands by Edgar Degas (1866-1868)
• The Dancing Lesson by Edgar Degas (1873-1876)
• Portraits at the Stock Exchange by Edgar Degas (1878-1879)

The second exhibition, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond: Post- Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay opens on September 25, 2010 and runs through January 18, 2011. This exhibition presents 120 of the Musée d’Orsay’s most famous late Impressionist paintings including those by Monet and Renoir, followed by the more individualistic styles of the early modern masters including Cézanne, Gauguin, Lautrec and van Gogh, and the Nabis painters, Bonnard and Vuillard. The exhibition will also provide a unique look at the Orsay’s spectacular collection of Pointillist painters including work by Seurat and Signac.

Notable works in this exhibition include:
• A Dance in the Country by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1883)
• The Circus by George Seurat (1891)
• Self Portrait by Vincent van Gogh (1887)
• Starry Night over the Rhone by Vincent van Gogh (1888)
• The Artist’s Bedroom at Arles by Vincent van Gogh (1889)
• Portrait of the Artist with the Yellow Christ by Paul Gauguin (1889)
• Tahitian Women, On the Beach by Paul Gauguin (1891)
• Still Life with Onions by Paul Cézanne (1895)
• The Snake Charmer by Henri Rousseau (1907)

About the Musée d’Orsay
The Musée d’Orsay, a train station created for the Paris International Exposition of 1900 and transformed into a museum by renowned architect Gae Aulenti, opened to the public on December 9, 1986 with its goal to highlight the art of the western world from the period 1848 through 1914. Its collection, one of the world’s finest, is comprised of paintings, sculpture, drawings, decorative arts, furniture, photography, and architectural work from this period consolidated from collections of the Louvre, Jeu de Paume and Modern Art Museum in Paris as well as major gifts from private collectors, artists and their heirs. The Musée d’Orsay’s collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings represent the finest survey of its kind in the world.

About the de Young
The de Young, designed by Herzog & de Meuron and located in Golden Gate Park, showcases American art from the 17th through the 21st centuries, international textile arts and costumes, and art from the Americas, the Pacific, and Africa.

De Young Museum
Golden Gate Park
50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive
San Francisco, CA 94118
www.deyoungmuseum.org
415.750.3600

PRESS CONTACTS:

Jill Lynch
415.750.3553
jlynch@famsf.org

Amelie Hardivillier
amelie.hardivillier@musee-orsay.fr

Presentation of the 32 National Museums in France.
Réunion des musées nationaux

Gain priority access to the Louvre Museum’s permanent exhibitions, as well as free entry to the Eugene Delacroix museum with the RATP Louvre combination pass. This includes two RATP transport tickets.
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Always good to know!
Admission to the Louvre Museum in Paris is free to all visitors on the first Sunday of each month (except for the Hall Napoléon).

• Free admission at all times for youths under 18.
• Free admission and direct access to the museum, without ticket, but with positive documentary evidence, for :
• under 18 with valid identification;
• under 26 on Fridays evenings (except for the exhibitions at the hall Napoléon);
• disabled and accompanied disabled with valid identification.

Regular admission ticket is otherwise approx. 11 euros

LINK:
Louvre museum