2014 in Giverny

January 6, 2014

Happy new year, and best wishes for 2014!

Here is the stunning ‘black’ garden of the Musee des Impressionnismes Giverny (Museum of Impressionisms).

The garden was created twenty years ago, this is why it indulges in this modern fashion for so called black flowers. Aren’t they amazing with their dark foliage or petals?

Of course black doesn’t exist for flowers, it’s always very dark red or purple, anyway unexpected hues for flowers.

Planting them together like here, and not just as accents, produces a very special effect, surprising and maybe a little bit disturbing, doesn’t it? I like the black garden, but I love the white one next to it!

The American impressionists will be back in 2014 in the gallery of the MDIG, that used to be the Museum of American Art Giverny, founded by Daniel Terra. The first exhibit will open on March 28, 2014 and is entitled “Impressionism and the Americans”. Featuring works by Cassatt, Whistler and Sargent, among many others, it will last until June 29, 2014. And for sure the impressionist painters used all the colors of the palette, not only black and white.

This exhibition will be followed by a second one focusing on Belgian artists, “Brussels, an Impressionist Capital” from July 11, 2014 to November 2, 2014.

 

30 Monets at Giverny next year!

October 9, 2008

I am absolutely excited by the news I’ve just read in the local newspaper of Vernon: next year, the Fine Arts museum of Giverny (temporarily named Impressionist Museum, but its name may change) will start its new life with an incredible exhibition. The organisers plan to obtain 30 Monets! The theme will be, obviously enough, Monet’s gardens.

It seems too fantastic to be true, but I’m not dreaming. Imagine! The visitor will be able to see the paintings on the very place where they were created, to go from the canvases to the garden, from the garden to the canvases. A unique, unforgetable experience. It will be absolutely gorgeous. Visitors will leave Giverny their eyes full of beauty and harmony.

The new museum will open with this exceptional exhibition on May 1st, 2009, one month later than Monet’s home and gardens at Giverny, opening on April 1st, 2009. The paintings by the master of Impressionism will stay at Giverny through August 15th.

An exhibition of Joan Mitchell‘s paintings is scheduled from August 23rd through October 31st, 2009. The American artist Joan Mitchell has a direct connection with Monet: she bought and lived in the house neighbouring his former house at Vétheuil, 20 km from Giverny.

In the future the museum of Giverny will constitute its own permanent collection. It could be open year round. It’s hard to imagine better news, isn’t it?

Museum of Impressionism

September 23, 2008

Next year, there will be a museum of Impressionism at Giverny.

The Museum of American Art Giverny located next Monet’s home at Giverny is living its last weeks.

Founded in 1992 by wealthy American collector Daniel Terra, the museum has exhibited American Art till now. Its visitors are mainly French individuals. They discover the Art History of the US, which is not well known in France.

But Foundation Terra will stop ruling the museum next year. The local county administration, the Departement de l’Eure, will deal with the new museum.

To what one can figure out as the public delight, the museum will be devoted to Impressionism. It makes sense on the very spot where Monet, the impressionist leader, painted so many masterpieces, and where hundreds of impressionist painters gathered to create Giverny artists colony.

The Musée de l’Impressionnisme of Giverny will have a famous partner: musée d’Orsay of Paris, a museum that owns the french state collections of paintings from the 19th century – dozens of works by Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, Pissarro, Sisley, Morisot…

Next year some of its best canvases will take a short trip to Giverny, 80km west of Paris.

The exhibition opening on 1 April 2009 will be dedicated to the most popular theme one could expect in Giverny: Monet’s gardens. It will certainly be a fantastic exhibition.

Tamed Horses

August 22, 2008

This group feturing a man taming horses can be seen in Vernon’s A. G. Poulain Museum, in the center of the town neighbouring Giverny.

The sculpture is due to Frederick MacMonnies, an American artist who lived and taught for several years in Giverny at the turn of the 20th century.

The man is on a smaller scale than the horses to make them look wilder, and to show the superiority of the spirit over the animal.