Going on tours to France is the dream of many people, making the country one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world. Many tourists go there to enjoy the culture, including the language, food variety, signature drinks, and art from historical to contemporary periods. The deeply-rooted culture of France has, over time, become inseparable from the creativity that birthed those cultural practices, like art appreciation. In that vein, check out some iconic art galleries in France and beyond.
The Louvre
The Louvre is undoubtedly France’s most famous art gallery and is the world’s most-visited art museum. The gallery’s building is a work of art, with its multi-level maze of galleries, staircases, passageways, and escalators. The building is pegged at 72,735 metres, making it the second-biggest art museum in the world. About 35,000 artworks and artefacts, including the famous Mona Lisa, hang on these vast walls.
The Louvre is one of the best places to appreciate French culture and creativity, as its sections are filled with everything from paintings and sculptures to ancient statues and modern artworks. The galleries in the Louvre are not all open every day. You should check the website to know when each gallery is open.
Musee d’Orsay
Another famous name among those conversant with French art galleries is Musee d’Orsay. It is located in Paris and can be easily accessible to people from around and afar. You can take a London to Paris train from around six in the morning and get to your destination two hours later. Getting to Musee d’Orsay by train is iconic, as the gallery was initially built as a train station.
The creativity with Musee d’Orsay does not end with the conversion of the old Beaux-Arts Orsay train station into a gallery. It is iconic for its collection of outstanding artworks, from sculptures, paintings, photography, decorative arts, graphic arts, and architecture. These works range from the late 19th to early 20th century, from artists including van Gogh, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Monet. The amount of artworks in Musee d’Orsay makes it one of the world’s largest collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art.
Centre Pompidou
One of the things arts do is to tell the stories of long-gone people and events. France has abundant that as the country boasts a rich history of art creation, appreciation, and collection. One of the best places to experience this is at the Centre Pompidou, known to locals as ‘Beaubourg.’ Beaubourg holds the most extensive collection of modern art in Europe, the second-largest worldwide, with only MoMA in New York rivalling it.
The architecture of the Centre Pompidou is the first thing that attracts visitors’ attention. The gallery’s colours, exposed pipes, and air ducts catch people’s attention when they visit to view the artworks housed in the building or to do one of its purposes. These purposes include being a multipurpose space for performances, exhibitions, cinema, art museum, and library. Both the structure of the building and the iconic artworks it holds exhibits the creative culture of the art space in the country.
Palais de Tokyo
Palais de Tokyo is relatively recent compared to other galleries on this list. It opened in 2002, and its stripped-back interior design was attention-grabbing immediately. The original 1937 building was renovated into an open-plan space with a skylit central hall, which makes it stand out even in pictures. Among its cultural impacts, the creative space hosts the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (Paris Museum of Modern Art). It’s also noteworthy that its name came from the 1937 Exposition Internationale.
Apart from being a performance space, Palais de Tokyo hosts exhibitions and a sizable collection of modern and contemporary artworks. The roll-call of contemporary artists includes impressive names like Pierre Joseph and Wang Du, among others.
Art Galleries in France are some of the most-visited places in the country. The creativity of locals and foreigners who have contributed to the country’s art culture is evident in the works displayed in these art galleries and other places in the country.
