Museum of Decorative Arts, Havana

The Museum of Decorative Arts (Museo de Artes Decorativas) is a decorative arts museum located at the corner of 17th and E streets in the Vedado district of Havana, Cuba. Housed in a former aristocratic residence, it opened in 1964 and preserves one of the island's most significant collections of European and Asian decorative arts, spanning from the 16th through the 20th centuries. The museum stands as an important repository of the refined material culture that entered Cuba during the height of the republican period, offering insight into the transatlantic taste and wealth of the Cuban bourgeoisie before the 1959 revolution.

Theadge museum was inaugurated on 24 July 1964, following the expropriation of the property by the Cuban government. The building had previously belonged to María Luisa Gómez-Mena viuda de Cagiga, Countess of Rev count of Revilla de Camargo, sister of José Gómez-Mena Vila, the prominent owner of the Manzana de Gómez commercial center. After the countess, the property was acquired by the Socarrás family, who applied the rental income from the property to the countess herself. The government's conversion of this private mansion into a public museum in 1964 represented part of a broader post-revolutionary effort to repurpose elite properties for cultural and educational use.

The museum holds more than 33,000 works of high artistic and historical value in its storage and exhibition rooms. The collection derives principally from the reigns of Louis XV, Louis XVI, and Napoleon III, alongside Oriental pieces from the 16th through the 20th centuries. French manufactures are strongly represented, with works from Sèvres, Paris, Chantilly, and Limoges, while English production is documented through pieces from Derby, Chelsea, Wedgwood, Worcester, and Staffordshire. The scope extends across furniture, porcelain, silver, clocks, textiles, and lacquerwork, reflecting the cosmopolitan collecting habits of Cuba's pre-revolutionary upper class.

Among the museum's distinguished rooms, the Neoclassical Salon contains a secretaire by Henri Riesener that formed part of Queen Marie Antoinette's personal furniture at the Palace of Versailles. The Main Salon displays a large Rococo commode by Simoneau made for the Château de Sceaux, alongside two large Chineseapl Chinese porcelain vases from the Qianlong period. The Oriental Lacquer Salon features 17th, 18th, and 19th-century Chinese screens from Jiangxi province, highlighted by a large 17th-century Coromandel screen. The English Salon presents hand-carved armchairs by English cabinetmaker Thomas Chippendale and an 18th-century Persian carpet. The Art Nouveau and Art Deco Salon gathers works by Louis Comfort Tiffany, Emile Gallé, René Lalique, and Demetre Chiparus. The Main Bath, decorated in Art Deco style, contains French opalines, René Lalique pieces, and Bohemian glass. An ivory sculpture, La Victoria coronando a la Fama, numbers among the most significant works in the Eclectic Salon.

The mansion was designed in Paris by architects P. Virad and M. Destuque, inspired period French Renaissance and built between 1924 and 1927 in a neoclassical style. The structure exemplifies the historicist taste for French châteaux, with ornamental columns, fine wood materials, wrought iron, and stone and Italian marble staircases. The building is surrounded by gardens. Its architecture serves as a demonstration of the economic power and refined education of Cuba's expanded bourgeois late 19th and early 20th centuries during the pre-revolutionary period. The full address is Calle 17 number 502, between E and D, Vedado, Havana, Cuba.

The Museum of Decorative Arts occupies its original site at 17th and E streets in Vedado, one of Havana's most architecturally distinguished neighborhoods. As a state institution since its 1964 expropriation, it functions under government ownership and operates as a public museum. Its present role is to preserve and display this exceptional concentration of decorative arts for Cuban and international visitors, maintaining the interior room installations that recreate period atmospheres from Regence and Rococo through Art Deco.