History of the Fontevraud Museum of Modern Art

Open since May 2021, the Fontevraud Museum of Modern Art rich and original collection, which can be viewed online, consists of paintings, drawings, sculptures, glassworks and antique objects.

The Fontevraud Museum of Modern Art is identified by the story it wants to tell: capturing the spirit of a collection.

The recreation of an ‘imaginary museum’, a highly personal – and even passionate – mental phenomenon, leads visitors into a world of forms and invites them to understand the perspective that guided the acquisitions.

Drawing on the richness and variety of this collection, the parcours reveals the exciting approach of moving from a private universe to a public space, offering visitors an experience that transcends space and time through the confrontation of objects from different cultures and periods, and finally, through the discovery of artists through the eyes of enlightened amateurs from the second half of the 20^th century.

Inaugurated in May 2021, the Fontevraud Museum of Modern Art was awarded with its first star in the 2022 edition of the Michelin Green Guide Châteaux de la Loire, Pays de la Loire, one of the most consulted guide collections by European tourists. It earned a second star in the same guide in 2024.

As the expression of choices and commitments, a private collection reveals the sensibility of those who built it. A museum, on the other hand, is identified by the story it tells.

So how do we reconcile the history of art and the history of taste, based on an exceptional donation of than 800 works (from Antiquity, Africa, Asia, the Americas and modern Western art)? How do you go from a private collection to a museum intended for the general audience?

The approach is simple: to escape the classifications of art history and offer a reading through the eyes of art lovers in the second half of the 20^th century. In a journey that abolishes space and time by confronting objects of different origins and periods, the museum invites the spectator on a sensory voyage. It does not recreate the universe of the collectors, but evokes it in an intimate, contemporary museography. The museum is off the beaten track, with a variety of ways of presenting works: groupings by formal relationships, thematic conversations, and unusual associations. For example, there are dialogues between a Sumerian dignitary and a painting by Maurice Marinot, an Egyptian mummy’s head and a portrait by Kees Van Dongen, a tapestry by Jean Lurçat and sculptures by Germaine Richier.

In this way, the museum suggests a relationship with works that are often unknown to the public, allowing them to claim ownership of these pieces. It encourages them to form a very personal connection with the artwork, an approach that can be adopted by anyone.

Dominique Gagneux, Director and Chief Curator