musée des années trente

The Musée des Années Trente (Museum of the 1930s) is a municipal museum in Boulogne-Billancourt, a western suburb of Paris, France, dedicated to the fine arts, decorative arts, and industrial arts of the 1930s. Founded in 1939 by Dr. Albert Besançon, the institution occupies the Espace Landowski at 28, Avenue André-Morizet and provides 3,000 square metres of exhibition space. Its holdings encompass approximately 1,500 sculptures, 800 paintings, and 20,000 drawings, alongside furniture, ceramics, posters, and archival documents. The museum matters as the principal French institution devoted to the artistic and industrial heritage of this decade, reflecting a pivotal period when Boulogne-Billancourt attracted numerous artists, architects, and designers due to its affordable studios and its role as a centre for aviation, automobile, and film industries.

The museum originated in 1939 to commemorate the 1925 decree that renamed the commune of Boulogne as Boulogne-Billancourt, embodying the motto of modernity as the marriage of arts and industry. Dr. Albert Besançon, the first curator, established the institution within the town hall to unify disparate collections related to the cultural and industrial heritage of the municipality. Following Besançon's death in 1983 at the age of 103, Emmanuel Bréon assumed the directorship and reoriented the museum's policy toward the exploration of 1930s heritage, a decade of particular prosperity for Boulogne-Billancourt in both industrial and cultural terms. Bréon and his collaborator Michèle Lefrançois systematically surveyed local heritage from 1983 onward, organising exhibitions and negotiating donations and deposits with families of artists who had resided in the city. According to Bréon, purchases accounted for only about ten percent of acquisitions, primarily furniture, while entire sculptors' estates were donated by descendants and numerous paintings were assigned through redistribution of national collections. The institution was renamed Musée des Années 30 in 1994 and moved to its present location in the Espace Paul-Landowski in 1998. Bréon directed the museum until 2008, when he became director of the Musée national de l'Orangerie des Tuileries.

The museum's collection is distributed across four levels and is notable for its reflection of a characteristic aesthetic shift in the 1930s: the return to realism and classicism. This relatively underexhibited artistic production is represented by figures such as Bernard Boutet de Monvel, Alfred Courmes, Maurice Denis, George Desvallières, Amédée Dubois de La Patellière, Eugène Poughéon, Henry de Waroquier, Joseph Bernard, and Paul Landowski. The collection addresses thematic areas including portraiture, sacred art, colonial art, and the École de Paris, presenting paintings, sculptures, and decorative art objects in integrated displays. The museum also encompasses a significant body of orientalist works, including paintings by artists associated with the French Ministry of Overseas and Colonies and scholarship holders from the Villa Abd-el-Tif. This orientalist collection was substantially developed following the exhibition Coloniales organised by the museum in 1989-1990, which drew works from the reserves of the Musée des Arts africains et océaniens, some of which remained on long-term deposit. Since 2017, the museum has housed the holdings of the former Musée-jardin Paul-Landowski.

The collection features works by architects of major significance including Le Corbusier, Tony Garnier, André Lurçat, Robert Mallet-Stevens, Auguste Perret, and Jean Prouvé, alongside designers Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann and Jules Leleu. Among the most prominent decorative art objects is a cabinet in panzerholz by Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann dating from 1922. The museum also holds works by artists such as Jan and Joël Martel and Tamara de Lempicka. The African and overseas works transferred from the former Musée national des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie form a distinctive component of the holdings. The collection's breadth reflects the convergence of artistic and industrial production that characterised Boulogne-Billancourt during the 1930s, when figures such as sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, painter Juan Gris, and the dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler were active in the city. Kahnweiler's celebrated dimanches de Boulogne brought together avant-garde artists, sculptors, musicians, writers, architects, and filmmakers at his residence.

The museum is housed in the Espace Landowski, completed in 1998 according to plans by the architectural firm Lobjoy & Bouvier. The building, which also contains a municipal cinema and media library, stands opposite the town hall of Boulogne-Billancourt designed by Tony Garnier. Its architectural language draws upon Art Deco, with proportions and profiling that evoke the formal repertoire of the 1930s that shaped the identity of this district. Internally, a large covered hall serves as a unifying element linking the different programme areas. Walls of polished or sandblasted concrete alternate with glazed bands accentuated by white concrete panels. The building's design thus establishes a dialogue with the historic architectural context of the area while accommodating contemporary museum functions.

The Musée des Années Trente is located at 28, Avenue André-Morizet in Boulogne-Billancourt, within the Espace Landowski. It is open daily except Mondays and holidays. The nearest Paris Métro station is Marcel Sembat on Line 9. The museum is integrated into a pedestrian circuit that allows visitors to discover surrounding architectural achievements by Le Corbusier, Mallet-Stevens, and others, as well as the personalities who inhabited them, including André Malraux. As a municipal museum, it is owned by the city of Boulogne-Billancourt and serves as a key cultural institution within the Hauts-de-Seine department, preserving and presenting the artistic legacy of a decade that proved formative for this western Parisian suburb.