1953 – 2023. History of a collection

The Musée Matisse is celebrating its sixtieth anniversary this year. To mark the occasion, the museum’s collection is being displayed on the ground floor of the Villa des Arènes (level 0 of the museum) through the prism of its history.

In the immediate post-war period, alongside artists such as Pierre Bonnard and art world personalities including Jean Cassou, Bernard Dorival and Georges Salles, Henri Matisse put his reputation to work for the Union Méditerranéenne pour l’Art Moderne (UMAM), an association created in 1946 to support contemporary art. He was involved in creating the Galerie des Ponchettes, Nice’s first modern art museum, inaugurated in 1950 with a major retrospective of his work, and played an active role in disseminating modern art on the Côte d’Azur.

In 1953, a year before his death, Matisse donated a collection of works to the City of Nice to create a monographic museum. This donation, supplemented by successive bequests and ongoing donations from his heirs right up to the present day, made it possible to create the museum. Taking an interest in the history of the Musée Matisse provides a better understanding of how its collections, which cover all of Matisse’s periods and techniques, have circulated and contributed to the study of his work in France and around the world.

The history of the collection, installed in 1963 in the Villa des Arènes which was extended in 1993, is inextricably linked to the museum’s institutional, municipal and administrative history, as well as the dynamics of the relationship between the State and the local authorities that have shaped its operations. The museum’s place in the landscape of French and international museum institutions is a fertile field of study, opening up new avenues of research, which this exhibition aims to explore.