HomeOrsay, Forty Years On

Orsay, Forty Years On

Orsay, quaranta ans après

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Published on Monday, February 23, 2026

Abstract

L’année 2026 marque le quarantième anniversaire du musée d’Orsay, ouvert au public le 9 décembre 1986. Dans le cadre des célébrations associées à cette date événement, l’établissement public du musée d’Orsay et du musée de l’Orangerie – Valéry Giscard d’Estaing organise, les 2 et 3 décembre 2026, un colloque scientifique international qui rassemblera à Paris des spécialistes de disciplines et de provenances géographiques variées. Il ambitionne de remettre en perspective l’histoire du musée d’Orsay et son rôle clé dans la perception et la mise en récit des développements artistiques de la seconde moitié du XIXe et du début du XXe siècle.

Announcement

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Presentation

The year 2026 marks the 40th anniversary of the Musée d’Orsay, which first opened to the public on December 9, 1986. To mark this milestone, the Public Establishment of the Musée d’Orsay and Musée de l’Orangerie – Valéry Giscard d’Estaing is organizing an international symposium in Paris on December 2 and 3, 2026, bringing together specialists from a wide range of disciplines and geographical backgrounds. The symposium aims to reassess the history of the Musée d’Orsay and its pivotal role in shaping perceptions and narratives of artistic developments in the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century. It will examine the intellectual and cultural context that led to the creation of the institution, while also exploring its more recent transformations. By reflecting on the history of the Musée d’Orsay, the symposium will also address the question of the 19th century’s contemporaneity: what does this century represent for us today? What is the future of the 19th century?

This reflective, contemporary, and forward-looking perspective will form the basis of a collective volume to be published in 2027 by the Daniel Marchesseau Resource and Research Center of the Musée d’Orsay. The theme will also be the focus of a special issue of 48-14. La nouvelle revue scientifique des musées d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie (to be published in fall 2026), as well as a special issue of the Revue du Louvre.

Argument

From its initial planning stages to its opening to a French and international public, the Musée d’Orsay has been at the center of numerous — at times heated — debates involving figures from the fields of art history, museology, architecture, heritage studies, and, more broadly, cultural policy. These debates addressed the transformation of the former Orsay railway station; the institution’s chronological scope (1848-1914) and the resulting redistribution of objects from national collections; the expansion of these collections, particularly into new fields such as photography and the decorative arts; the place accorded to so-called “academic” movements and foreign schools; the role of historical context within exhibition spaces; and the architectural and museographic choices that shaped the museum. They also raised broader political and symbolic questions, situating the creation of the Musée d’Orsay between that of the Centre Pompidou and the Louvre Pyramid project. The birth of Orsay can therefore be approached from a wide range of perspectives. An issue of the journal Le Débat (“Orsay: Towards Another 19th Century”), published in spring 1987, crystallized many of the contemporary discussions by confronting differing views on the role and nature of a museum devoted to the second half of the 19th century — at the risk, perhaps, of partially fixing subsequent interpretations. Likewise, the proceedings of the landmark symposium Histoire de l'art du XIXe siècle (1848-1914): bilans et perspectives, organized at the École du Louvre in conjunction with the museum’s 20th anniversary, broadened the critical scope of these debates. Since then, significant scholarly contributions have revisited the history of the institution and its multiple legacies, underscoring the decisive role of the Musée d’Orsay in historiography and in shaping public presentations of the arts and of visual culture from 1848 until the First World War.

This symposium will focus on the impact of the Musée d’Orsay since its creation, its effects and counter-effects on the historiography of the arts from 1848 to 1914 and on museum life in France and internationally. For its part, it will give equal consideration to the intellectual dynamics that have shaped and continue to reshape it. Through a series of lectures and round tables, it will seek to offer new analyses of the museum's history, from its early days up to the present. While acknowledging the debates that led to the institution's creation in 1986, this symposium will encourage any approach that sheds new light on the birth of the Musée d'Orsay and the many issues associated with this event.

Structures/ Inventing the Obvious

  • Inventing an institution: the Musée d’Orsay as an idea. A political, cultural, and ideological construction rather than a self-evident part of national heritage. The individuals who shaped Orsay: trajectories, careers, networks.
  • The ghost of a railway station: Orsay as an architectural palimpsest. The “rescue” of the former train station—myths and realities.
  • Monument or machine? The Musée d’Orsay as a site of memory, poetic projection, and staging of the 19th century.
  • Support/surface: a museum within a train station. The architecture of ACT (R. Bardon, P. Colboc, J.-P. Philippon) and the museography of Gae Aulenti within the architectural and design context of their time.
  • Orsay and its publics: 40 years,140 million visitors. What relationships exist between international audiences (particularly from the United States, Europe, Japan, and Korea) and local visitors? How is the museum used, and by whom? The Musée d’Orsay as forum. The circulation of the collections and off-site programming.

Objects / Classifying, Prioritizing, Distributing, Collecting

  • Inventing collections: gathering ensembles from scratch (photography) or almost (decorative arts).
  • Display as discourse: permanence, mobility, and successive rewritings of the 19th century through display.
  • Multidisciplinarity: founding promise or unstable compromise? Transdisciplinary intersections and tensions (displays, exhibitions, programming).
  • To restore or to interpret? Materiality, conservation choices, and the production of meaning.

Narratives / Is the 19th Century Our Contemporary?

  • The Musée d’Orsay as a site of debate: controversies, resistance, and intellectual disputes surrounding a “museum of the 19th century.”
  • The “Orsay effect”: what visions of the 19th-early 20th century has the museum promoted, marginalized, or made possible? What reciprocal institutional exchanges and influences have shaped national and international museum practices since its creation? Orsay’s role in the discovery, rediscovery, or “invention” of artists and works, viewed through the lens of the history of taste.
  • Resonances: a museum in the world—collaborations, boundaries, convergences.
  • Is the 19th century over? Critical distance, contemporary politics, and present-day uses of a problematic century.
  • Is Orsay 40 or 150 years old? Disjointed temporalities and regimes of historicity.
  • Collisions and dialogues: contemporary artists and contemporary art at the Musée d’Orsay.

Explorations / “Or, c’est”: A Laboratory

  • Exhibiting before exhibiting: preliminary exhibitions as sites of experimentation and rupture before 1986. The prehistory of the Musée d’Orsay.
  • Reframing the 19th century: thematic exhibitions, marginal objects, overlooked narratives.
  • Expanding the collections: donations, the art market, and acquisition policies.
  • Publications and authority: catalogues, guides, and journals as instruments for reinforcing and/or extending the canon.
  • The temple and the agora: mediation, cultural programming, and the shaping of public debate. The Musée d’Orsay in society.
  • Research at the museum: library, archives, documentation, and research resources.
  • International and global perspectives: the worlds of Orsay—and beyond.

This call is open to museum curators, museum professionals, and researchers from all disciplines. Original and cross-disciplinary approaches related to the questions outlined above—or exploring new areas of reflection—are particularly encouraged. Contributions are especially welcome if they resonate with the history, present, and future of the Musée d'Orsay, and aim to deepen our understanding of the perception of 19th-century artistic developments, as well as the institutions and spaces that preserve and present this heritage.

Submission guidelines

Proposals for a 20-minute presentation should include an abstract (maximum 4,000 characters) and a brief bio-bibliography. Submissions must be sent to colloque40ans@musee-orsay.fr,

by April 1, 2026.

The proceedings of the conference will be published in 2027 by the Daniel Marchesseau Resource and Research Center.

Organizing committee

  • Anaïs Alchus (curator, decorative arts, EPMO)
  • Victor Claass (research coordinator, Daniel Marchesseau Resource and Research Center, EPMO)
  • Antonine Fulla (director of cultural programming and auditoriums, EPMO)
  • France Nerlich (founding-director, Daniel Marchesseau Resource and Research Center, EPMO)
  • Sylvie Patry (curator, responsible for the anniversary celebrations of the Musée d'Orsay and the Musée de l'Orangerie, EPMO)
  • Paul Perrin (director of conservation and collections, EPMO)
  • Scarlett Reliquet (responsible of cultural and scientific programming, EPMO)

Scientific committee

  • Nienke Bakker (curator, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)
  • Barry Bergdoll (professor, Columbia University, New York)
  • Laure Chabanne (curator, painting, EPMO)
  • Élise Dubreuil (curator, decorative arts, EPMO)
  • Charlotte Foucher Zarmanian (research director, EHESS/CNRS)
  • Thomas Galifot (curator, photography, EPMO)
  • Kimberly A. Jones (curator, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.)
  • Édouard Papet (curator, sculpture, EPMO)
  • Pierre Singaravélou (professor, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)
  • Agnès Thurnauer (artist)
  • Bertrand Tillier (professor, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)

Event attendance modalities

Full on-site event


Date(s)

  • Wednesday, April 01, 2026

Keywords

  • musée d'orsay, histoire de l'art, histoire culturelle, études visuelles, histoire des musées, patrimoine

Contact(s)

  • Victor Claass
    courriel : victor [dot] claass [at] musee-orsay [dot] fr

Reference Urls

Information source

  • Victor Claass
    courriel : victor [dot] claass [at] musee-orsay [dot] fr

License

CC0-1.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

To cite this announcement

« Orsay, Forty Years On », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Monday, February 23, 2026, https://doi.org/10.58079/15qv1

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