MAM is back! Or the great return of the Troyes Museum of Modern Art.
About the complete reopening after work of the Troyes Museum of Modern Art.
Have you not yet landed in Troyes? When you hear the name of this city, do you think of factory outlets? What's great is that you will be able to be surprised. And delighted. I have already been crazy about the historic heart of Troyes and its museums nestled in heritage monuments for a long time, and its very heart too, this monumental sculpture made entirely of fine stainless steel lace but still weighing two tonnes, made in a Troyan factory and signed by a couple of artists from Aube, Michèle and Thierry Kayo-Houël, enthroned in the middle of jets of water refreshing the summer. So I had a front-row seat when huge billboards popped up all over the city announcing the complete reopening of the Museum of Modern Art, even springing from the Seine which runs through the city. “MAM IS BACK” announced superb multicolored posters. YAY, did I just want to answer!
Because the story of the collectors Pierre and Denise Lévy having offered their impressive collection of two thousand works of art to the State in 1976, a donation considered one of the most generous of the century, has always amazed me. Not only because the couple, having made their fortune in textiles, when nothing predestined them for it, chose to share it with artists throughout their existence, but also because they built up their collection at over time only works of art purchased because he liked them. No speculation here. No strategy for getting rich on the art market by investing in paintings or sculptures to resell them. Only the love of art and artists. Beauty in its purest form. When Pierre and Denise roamed the Parisian art galleries with their artist friend Maurice Marinot (1882-1960), it was to meet their favorites.
“A museum founded by collectors, today, would seem almost banal,” writes Isabelle Manca-Kunert in L’Oeil this June. “In 1982, it was a small revolution. Especially since its creators wanted the museum to be public, installed in a historic monument and outside Paris! A first, inaugurated with great fanfare by President Mitterrand and his emblematic Minister of Culture Jack Lang. (…) Pierre Lévy (1907-2002) surely had no idea when he arrived from his native Alsace that he would become a figure in Champagne. Posted in 1927 to Troyes for his military service, he enjoyed this pretty town. Especially since he encounters, in quick succession, love and fortune. For love, it is obvious as soon as his eyes meet those of Denise Lièvre (1911-1993). As for fortune, it is the combination of hard work and great flair that propels this small industrialist to the head of a textile empire. »
It must be said that Denise is the daughter of the owner of the “Jersey Troyen” knitwear factory. Between them, they know what they are doing by buying the Devanlay-Recoing factories: they will make it one of the largest French textile entities in the Troyes employment area. The Devanlay company is also known today for having the global license to manufacture and distribute Lacoste clothing. Hence this reputation for “factory outlets” which sticks to Troyes to the point of making us forget its museums! In any case, the link is firmly woven. Two thousand works of modern art that moved a couple of enlightened industrialists have enabled the opening of an exceptional museum, which more than ever asserts its position as a house of sensitive collectors, in its itinerary but also in its programming. As proof, the major temporary reopening exhibition which makes its exhibition spaces available to the Massimo and Sonia Cirulli Foundation from June 22 to October 20. The first stop in France for this private collection of Italian art and in particular Futurism, established in Bologna, is therefore for Troyes!
Thus, from April 16 to May 12, entry to the Museum of Modern Art in Troyes was free for all, just to celebrate in style the completion of the renovation work on the splendid 16th century episcopal palace, having forced the museum to closed its doors in 2018. Even if since December 27, 2022, a partial reopening had made it possible to present to the public a prefiguration space on the ground floor retracing the history of the collections, the museum's key artists as well as the prefiguration of the second part of the permanent tour on the art of the interwar period at the end of the 1960s. As well as the start of the permanent tour on the second floor presenting the art of the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, from the Realists to variations around Cubism, including so-called “Fauve” works and the collection of sculptures from Africa and Oceania. In addition to revealing to the public new works recently acquired or discovered, adding to the pleasure of seeing or revisiting the museum's masterpieces, the partial reopening also made it possible to discover a graphic arts cabinet, for a rotating presentation of the graphic arts collection and artists' books, accessibility of the entire building for people with reduced mobility, a new enlarged reception area including shop, toilets and changing rooms, and a garden transformed into a living space and to the route enriched with new sculptures.
The three floors of the Museum of Modern Art are now accessible to all, and the museography has been completely reviewed and corrected. The new route begins on the second floor, and ends with an exciting animated film. Throughout the year, the Episcopal Palace of Troyes is now the superb setting which houses paintings by Honoré Daumier, Gustave Courbet, Jean-François Millet, Edgard Degas, Édouard Vuillard, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Felix Vallotton , Pierre Bonnard, Seurat, Metzinger… An exceptional collection of Fauvist works (1905-1907) also allows us to understand this movement in the diversity of the approaches of all its protagonists: André Derain, Georges Braque, Maurice de Vlaminck, Othon Friesz, Kees van Dongen, Henri Matisse, Albert Marquet. Little sensitive to the cubism of Picasso, whose sculpture of the Fool they own, on the other hand, the Lévys were interested in a more traditional cubism with Roger de La Fresnaye and artists from the School of Paris such as Juan Gris, Henri Hayden, Chaïm Soutine , Amedeo Modigliani. At the bend of the picture rails we also come across Max Ernst, André Masson, Robert Delaunay, André Dunoyer de Segonzac, Charles Dufresne, André Mare, Raoul Dufy, Nicolas de Staël, Balthus, Bernard Buffet, Georges Rouault, Maria Elena Vieira Da Silva… And in Following the Lévy donation, the collection was enriched with gifts and donations from artists or their relatives, and from other collectors!
SO ? When are you coming to Troyes?
Article written by Valibri in Roulotte