Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'Archéologie de Besançon

The Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'Archéologie de Besançon is a municipal museum located on the Place de la Révolution in Besançon, France. Founded in 1694, it is the oldest public museum in France, predating the Louvre by nearly a century. The institution houses diverse collections spanning archaeology, painting, and graphic arts, and has undergone significant modern renovations that were completed in 2018.

The museum originated from the 1694 bequest of Abbot Jean-Baptiste Boisot to the Benedictine monks of Saint-Vincent in Besançon. His gift included manuscripts, printed books, medals, eleven paintings, and four busts from the Granvelle family, with the condition that the collections be accessible to the public twice weekly. This bibliothèque-musée Boisot functioned throughout the eighteenth century and is recognized as France's first public museum. Following the French Revolution, the Benedictine monastery was dissolved and the collections passed to municipal control. The city expanded holdings through revolutionary confiscations and further acquisitions. In 1843, the museum relocated to a purpose-built grain hall. An archaeological museum was established in 1849 in response to growing interest in Besançon's Roman past. The institution continued to grow through major donations, notably from George and Adèle Besson in the twentieth century. From 1967 to 1970, architect Louis Miquel, a pupil of Le Corbusier, reorganized the building, covering the interior courtyard with a concrete structure. A total renovation and enlargement began in October 2015 under architect Adelfo Scaranello. The project cost 11 million euros and included restoration of approximately one thousand paintings. The renovated museum was inaugurated on 16 November 2018 by President Emmanuel Macron, Minister of Culture Franck Riester, and Mayor Jean-Louis Fousseret. Attendance rose to 105,459 visitors by the end of 2019.

The collections are organized into three principal categories: archaeology, painting, and the drawing cabinet. The archaeological holdings encompass Egyptian, prehistoric, Gallo-Roman, and medieval materials. The drawing cabinet contains over 5,500 works from European schools dating from the late fifteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, making it one of France's largest graphic arts collections. The painting collection traces the main tendencies and evolution of European art from the fourteenth to the twentieth centuries, with substantial representations of Italian, Northern European, Spanish, and French schools.

In archaeology, the Egyptian collection features the mummies of Seramon, a royal scribe of the 21st Dynasty, and Ankhpakhered, an artist of Amon and son of a priest of the 26th Dynasty. The Gallo-Roman collection is particularly significant, including the mosaïque du Neptune and mosaïque de la Méduse discovered in the domus of the collège Lumière, and the bronze Taureau d'Avrigney, a three-horned bull from Avrigney-Virey discovered in 1756 that attests to Gallo-Roman cultic art and the persistence of Celtic mythology after Romanization. The drawing cabinet holds works by Federico Barocci, Tintoretto, Annibale Carracci, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Albrecht Dürer, Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens, Rembrandt, Nicolas Poussin, Simon Vouet, François Boucher, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Hubert Robert, Antoine Watteau, Jacques-Louis David, Théodore Géricault, Eugène Delacroix, Gustave Courbet, Raoul Dufy, Albert Marquet, Henri Matisse, and Auguste Rodin. Notable paintings include Bronzino's Deposition of Christ; Giovanni Bellini's Drunkenness of Noah, his last painting; Lucas Cranach the Elder's Adam and Eve, The Nymph at the Source, and Courtesan and Old Man; Francisco Goya's The Corpse of the Jesuit Brebeuf and two cannibalism scenes; and Gustave Courbet's monumental L'Hallali du cerf. The French eighteenth century is represented by François Boucher's chinoiseries including Festin de l'empereur de Chine and Le Jardin chinois. Japanese art is represented by Kakizaki Hakyo's eleven original portraits from the Ishūretsuzō.

Since 1843, the museum has occupied a former grain hall in the center of Besançon, designed by architect Pierre Marnotte. The building originally accommodated both grain sales and museum visitors. The structure proved insufficient following the Besson donation, prompting reconstruction from 1967 to 1970 by Louis Miquel, who enclosed the interior courtyard with a concrete structure. The 2014-2018 renovation by Adelfo Scaranello completely transformed the building while maintaining its central location on the Place de la Révolution.

The Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'Archéologie de Besançon is a municipal museum owned by the city of Besançon. It is located on the Place de la Révolution in the city center. The museum's website is http://www.mbaa.besancon.fr/. Following its 2018 reopening, the institution has served as a major cultural destination in eastern France, with annual attendance exceeding 105,000 visitors.