Musée National d'Art Moderne

The Musée National d'Art Moderne is the national museum for modern art of France, located in the 4th arrondissement of Paris within the Centre Pompidou. It holds the largest collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe, and the second largest in the world after the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The museum's holdings encompass more than 100,000 works by over 6,400 artists from 90 countries, spanning painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, cinema, new media, architecture, and design. In 2021, it ranked as the 10th most visited art museum globally, drawing 1,501,040 visitors.

The institution succeeded the Musée du Luxembourg, which King Louis XVIII established in 1818 as Europe's first museum of contemporary art, dedicated to living artists whose works would transfer to the Louvre ten years after their death. By the 1920s, the Luxembourg collection had outgrown its space, leading to the creation of an annexe at the Jeu de Paume in 1922 for foreign schools. In 1934, the state decided to construct a dedicated building, resulting in the Palais de Tokyo, completed for the 1937 International Exhibition. Its opening as a modern art museum, planned for 1939, was delayed by World War II. The museum partially opened on August 6, 1942, displaying only a third of its collection, which had been hidden in provincial caches. Its true inauguration took place on June 9, 1947, under its first director, Jean Cassou, who integrated the foreign schools collection from the Jeu de Paume and dramatically expanded the holdings through acquisitions and donations from artists like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. In 1977, the museum moved to its current home in the newly constructed Centre Georges Pompidou, leaving post-impressionist works born before 1870 behind to eventually join the Musée d'Orsay in 1986.

The collection traces artistic production from Fauvism in 1905 to the present. It is exhibited chronologically across two floors of the Centre Pompidou: the 5th floor covers modern art from 1905 to 1960, while the 4th floor displays contemporary art from 1960 onward. The modern wing represents movements such as Fauvism, Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism, while the contemporary wing features Pop Art, Nouveau Réalisme, and Conceptual art, alongside architecture and design. To showcase the depth of the holdings, the displayed works are rotated approximately every two years. The museum also organizes major temporary exhibitions on a separate 6th floor and has expanded its programming to provincial and international branches, including the Centre Pompidou-Metz and locations in Málaga and Brussels.

The modern art holdings feature key figures including Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, Wassily Kandinsky, Kasimir Malevich, Frida Kahlo, and Salvador Dalí. The contemporary collection includes works by Andy Warhol, Niki de Saint Phalle, Anish Kapoor, and Bill Viola, as well as design by Philippe Starck and Jean Nouvel. Significant early acquisitions include Francis Picabia's Udnie and the first abstract work in the museum, by František Kupka. Following the death of Constantin Brâncuși in 1957, the museum received the contents of his studio, which was later reconstructed adjacent to the Centre Pompidou by architect Renzo Piano. The institution has also faced claims regarding Nazi-looted art, acknowledging in 2011 that it held three looted paintings by Fédor Löwenstein and restituting a Georges Braque painting acquired from Heinz Berggruen in 1981 to the heirs of Alphonse Kann.

Since 1977, the museum has been housed in the Centre Georges Pompidou, a building designed by architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers. The structure is renowned for its inside-out architecture, where functional elements like air conditioning ducts, water pipes, and escalators are color-coded and moved to the exterior. This design was intended to create vast, flexible, column-free interior galleries capable of accommodating large-scale modern and contemporary installations. The museum occupies approximately 18,500 square meters of exhibition space divided between the 4th and 5th floors, plus 5,900 square meters for temporary exhibitions, out of a total of 28,000 square meters dedicated to the museum within the larger cultural center. In 1985, architect Gae Aulenti enlarged and reconfigured the exhibition spaces to accommodate the growing collection.

The museum is located in the Quartier Saint-Merri of the 4th arrondissement of Paris at the Centre Pompidou. It operates as a national museum under the French state. The adjacent Atelier Brancusi, located at 19 Rue Beaubourg on the Place Georges Pompidou, is accessible to the public. The Centre Pompidou complex also houses the Bibliothèque publique d'information and the IRCAM music research center, fulfilling President Georges Pompidou's vision for a multidisciplinary cultural center. The museum's official website is centrepompidou.fr.