American Friends Musées d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie

American Friends Musées d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie Strengthening ties between Americans & the Musée d’Orsay & the Musée de l'Orangerie while supporting one of the world’s greatest collections of French Art.

We support:
Exhibitions in France & the USA
Supporting the museum’s ongoing commitment to share works of art and collaborate with American museums, enriching exhibitions viewed in the United States and in Paris. Education resources in English
We encourage and assist the museum’s efforts to include English in all of its education efforts—wall text, tours, electronic and print resources. Library and

archives
AFMO promotes the seldom seen, but very used, documentation library. Capital improvements to enhance the experience of museum visitors AFMO supports building renovations to enable state-of-the art settings for more than a million Americans who visit the much loved museums. American art included in exhibitions
AFMO supports the Orsay’s inclusion of contemporary, and earlier American artists. Acquisitions and Restoration
AFMO supports collection restoration, and acquisition of new works.

Rousseau’s artistic career evolved in Parisian neighbourhoods undergoing complete transformations, around Montparnasse w...
06/02/2026

Rousseau’s artistic career evolved in Parisian neighbourhoods undergoing complete transformations, around Montparnasse where he lived. Surrounded by artisans and merchants from the petite bourgeoisie, he painted numerous paintings of his entourage, such as the one shown above. Some of these works would be commissioned, while others served as currency to settle bills.

Shown above is ‘La Noce’. At first sight, this work appears to look like a photographic portrait of a wedding, the protagonists posing in formal attire for the photographer. Yet, there is something surreal about this representation. The characters’ feet are missing, as often is the case in Rousseau’s work. The bride appears to float. Her veil sits upon her grandmother’s dress, contradicting the perspective suggested by the placement of each character at a different level in the composition. This was not a clumsy mistake but intentional, deliberate choice as Rousseau repainted the work to achieve this effect. The bride is like an apparition suspended in air.

Rousseau introduces an element of the bizarre to reality. The dog in the foreground, comically oversized and awkward as he is, acts as a repoussoir or device to take the eye deep into the composition, asserting Rousseau as a master of spatial paradox.
The group is framed by stylised trees that are too small and have improbable foliage. Combined with the yellow ochre background and ethereally intense blue sky, a kind of mandorla is created around the group.

‘La Noce’ is currently on show in exhibition “Henri Rousseau. A Painter’s Ambition”, on display until July 20th, 2026.

Shown here: Henri Rousseau, “La Noce”, 1905, © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée de l’Orangerie) / Hervé Lewandowski

05/29/2026

Earlier this month, the Musée d’Orsay inaugurated their new permanent gallery thanks to AFMO’s support: the ‘To Whom Do These Works Belong?’ Gallery. Curated by Dr. Ines Rotermund-Reynard and François Blanchetière, this gallery presents rotating installations of MNR works, inviting visitors to engage with their histories and the research currently underway in a space conceived for reflection and remembrance.

This gallery is only one facet of the Musée d’Orsay Provenance Research Program, which AFMO is proud to support. The museum has committed to a five-year research project aiming to address the information gap on 225 works in the Orsay’s collection looted during the N**i and Vichy Regimes and returned to France at the war’s end. These works are known today as Musées Nationaux Récupération, or MNR. They do not belong to the State, which holds them only on a provisional basis until their rightful owners are found.

AFMO is proud to support an initiative that advances transparency, historical understanding, and the responsible stewardship of cultural heritage. Over the coming five years, AFMO will fund a team of art historians and researchers led by provenance expert Dr. Rotermund-Reynard. Her team will investigate the ownership histories of the 225 MNR works in the Musée d’Orsay’s collection, as well as approximately 200 pieces acquired after 1933.

The ‘To Whom Do These Works Belong’ gallery is now open to the public and is located on the ground floor of the Musée d’Orsay in Room 10B, at the end of the nave.

In the spring of 1883, Renoir completed three life-size paintings of dancing couples: ‘Dance at Bougival’ (Slide 1), ‘Ci...
05/28/2026

In the spring of 1883, Renoir completed three life-size paintings of dancing couples: ‘Dance at Bougival’ (Slide 1), ‘City Dance’ (Slide 2), and ‘Country Dance’ (Slide 3). These marked a shift in style for Renoir as the figures retain the softness and ease of Impressionism but emphasise form and outline. The three ‘Dances’ mark the epitome of Renoir’s representation of couples and are undoubtedly the best depictions of modern love. ‘Dance at Bougival’, set during a Sunday afternoon ball in a village ten miles west of Paris with a somewhat dubious reputation, is the most romantic of these works.

The female model represented in both ‘Dance at Bougival’ and ‘City Dance’ is a seventeen-year-old Marie-Clementine Valadon, better known today as Suzanne Valadon, the renowned Post-Impressionist painter. Her counterpart is Paul Lhote, a writer and friend of Renoir’s. The joy and passion shared by these two is evident in ‘Dance at Bougival’. The man’s eyes are masked by his boatman’s straw hat, yet he expresses his intentions through his body language. The woman completes the harmony, both visually and sensually, that is at the heart of this painting. Their ungloved hands clasped together, the proximity of their faces and her absorbed, half-closed gaze announce a public intimacy that would have read as flirtatious in the 1880s. Renoir, however, protects them with a ring of circular rhythms: the sweep of the skirt, the loop of the man’s arm, the turn of their clasped fingers, and the flicker of green‑blue brushwork in the trees. These spirals allow us, as viewers, to not only see their dance but to hear it.

‘Dance at Bougival’, ‘Country Dance’, and ‘City Dance’ are all currently on show in the Musée d’Orsay’s exhibition “Renoir and Love. A Joyful Modernity (1865-1885)”, on display until July 19th 2026.

AFMO members benefit from skip-the-line and early hours access to this exhibition.

05/22/2026

AFMO is proud to support “Youssef Nabil. To Dream Again”, on display at the until September 13th, 2026.

Born in 1972, Franco-Egyptian photographer and videographer, Youssef Nabil, draws inspiration from the concept of memory...
05/19/2026

Born in 1972, Franco-Egyptian photographer and videographer, Youssef Nabil, draws inspiration from the concept of memory and the cinematic universe he grew up admiring in his native country, Egypt. Nabil began his career at the age of 20 by staging tableaux in which his subjects acted out melodramas recalling film stills from the golden age of Egyptian cinema. His works’ ethereal aesthetics take from the hand coloring photography technique of the technicolor films. By hand-painting each of his black and white photographs, he makes variations out of editions, each a unique version of his labor. His photographs provide an escape from reality, funneled through his cinematographic sensibility. They are marked by a sense of calm, safety and pleasure, flirting with notions of exoticism and eroticism. The images seamlessly defies the confines of genres, melding together to create a dreamlike sensual mise en scène.

His art borrows from the registers of dream and nostalgia, seeking to escape from questions of identity to embody an idealized and fantasized Mediterranean world without borders. In the artist’s eyes, Egypt is the setting for an accepted, sensual orientalism, with images that make fresh use of its codes: warm, bright colors bathing in a tranquil atmosphere composed of desires and dreams, depicting a free Orient, without prohibition or censure.

This exhibition marks a full-circle moment for the artist, who first visited the Musée d’Orsay at the age of 20. Since then, the museum’s collections have continuously inspired his work, as evidenced by the works shown above: Nabil’s ‘Self-Portrait with Roots’ and Odilon Redon’s ‘Sommeil de Caliban’. This exhibition is conceived as a conversation between the artist’s work and the Musée d’Orsay’s collection. The exhibition title “To Dream Again (De rêver encore)” highlights the central role of dreams in Youssef Nabil’s work, as well as in the Orientalist and Symbolist movements that inspire it.

AFMO is proud to support “Youssef Nabil. To Dream Again”, on display until September 13th, 2026.

05/18/2026

This morning, our members had the Musée d’Orsay entirely to themselves for a private visit of “Renoir. Dessinateur”. Empty halls, masterpieces, and no crowds.

When you join AFMO, you’re not just unlocking exclusive experiences like this one. You’re also directly supporting the and the

Find the link to become a member in our bio.

Henri Rousseau is perhaps most well known for his eclectic paintings of jungles, such as the one shown above. These exot...
05/12/2026

Henri Rousseau is perhaps most well known for his eclectic paintings of jungles, such as the one shown above. These exotic dreams of his however were not nourished through travels but in the heart of Paris. Most of his jungle scenes were imagined in the Natural History Museum and the Jardin des Plantes’ greenhouse.

Among Rousseau’s most fervent admirers were Alfred Jarry, André Breton, Guillaume Apollinaire, Robert Delaunay and Pablo Picasso. The canvas shown above, ‘La Charmeuse de serpents’, was commissioned by Delaunay’s mother, Berthe Delaunay. Rousseau once remarked to Picasso: “Basically, you do in an Egyptian style what I do in the modern style.” His remark may seem surprising and even funny, yet everything about ‘La Charmeuse de serpents’ is new: the subject first of all, a black Eve in a disquieting Garden of Eden, charming a snake as terrifying as the serpent in Genesis was seductive. Then the style: the bright, dense colours, backlit, anticipating the colours of a painter like Magritte, drawing that is both precise and naïve, and a vertical composition innovative in its asymmetry.

The human figure, the animals, and the weird vegetation have all been painted with the same painstaking care to create a scene marked by underlying ambiguity. Does the woman charm the wild, transfixing it still in a strange silence? Or has her music attracted danger, making her the snakes’ next prey? In any case, this woman facing us is confronted with a gaze that is essentially Western, nourished by the iconography of the Garden of Eden and Orientalist motifs. Through its originality, variety, and unique character, this canvas justifies its status as a masterpiece and contributes to the enigmatic nature of the artist. The fantastic world of this canvas heralds Surrealism.

‘La Charmeuse de serpents’ is currently on show in the Musée de l’Orangerie’s exhibition “Henri Rousseau. A Painter’s Ambition”, on display until July 20th, 2026.

The scale of art looting carried out by the N**i regime during World War Two is without precedent. By 1945, over 100,000...
05/05/2026

The scale of art looting carried out by the N**i regime during World War Two is without precedent. By 1945, over 100,000 cultural objects in Europe had been declared as spoliated.

At the war’s end, the Allies recovered 60,000 artworks from Germany and its occupied territories. These were returned to France, where inscriptions and other clues suggested they had originated. By 1950, 45,000 of these works had successfully been reunited with their rightful owners. In the early 1950s, the State chose to sell most of the remaining 15,000 to help fund the reconstruction of France but selected approximately 2,200 works to be kept in the care of national museums, hoping that public display and further provenance research would draw out their owners. These works are known today as Musées Nationaux Récupération, or MNR. They do not belong to the State, which holds them only on a provisional basis. Today, 225 MNRs are in the care of the Musée d’Orsay, such as the Edgar Degas work shown above.

The provenance of these works remains incomplete, and the Musée d’Orsay has committed to a five-year research project to address this. AFMO is proud to support an initiative that advances transparency, historical understanding, and the responsible stewardship of cultural heritage. Over the coming five years, AFMO will fund a team of art historians and researchers led by provenance expert Dr. Ines Rotermund-Reynard. Her team will investigate the ownership histories of the 225 MNR works in the Musée d’Orsay’s collection, as well as approximately 200 pieces acquired after 1933.

Alongside this research, and made possible by AFMO’s support, the Musée d’Orsay has opened a dedicated gallery, curated by Dr. Rotermund-Reynard and François Blanchetière: ‘To Whom Do These Works Belong?’ The gallery presents rotating installations of MNR works, inviting visitors to engage with their histories and the research currently underway in a space conceived for reflection and remembrance.

The ‘To Whom Do These Works Belong’ gallery is now open to the public and is located on the ground floor of the Musée d’Orsay in room 10b, at the end of the nave.

Towards the end of summer 1880, Renoir wrote to his friend Paul Bérard: “I am working on a painting of boaters which had...
04/28/2026

Towards the end of summer 1880, Renoir wrote to his friend Paul Bérard: “I am working on a painting of boaters which had been nagging at me for a long time […] It’s already very difficult: from time to time you have to attempt things beyond your strength”.

‘Le Déjeuner des canotiers’, shown above, was originally intended for the Salon. It marked a turning point in Renoir’s work. It encapsulates the artist’s work from the preceding years spent along the banks of the Seine. Renoir was passionate about painting figures in nature. He composes a complex scene of modern life bathed in sunlight, highlighting the conviviality of these lunches and a certain idea of ​​happiness. Neither Impressionist nor Classicist, Renoir inscribes his name in the pantheon of the great history of painting.

This painting is a real ‘who’s who’ of 19th century Paris. In the foreground, on the left, Aline Charigot (the painter’s future wife) is playing with her small dog. Behind her stands Hippolyte-Alphonse Fournaise, son of the innkeeper. Leaning on the railing, his sister, Alphonsine Fournaise, listens to Baron Raoul Barbier, a close friend of Renoir’s, who is seated with his back turned. The figure in the foreground, on the right, is often identified as Gustave Caillebotte, depicted here as a younger man.

Paul Durand-Ruel purchased the painting and exhibited the seventh edition of the Impressionist exhibition. Years later, art collector Duncan Phillips purchased the table from the heirs of the Durand-Ruel gallery. Phillips hoped to exhibit the work in his private museum in Washington. He considered ‘Le Déjeuner des Canotiers’ to be one of the world’s greatest masterpieces, predicting people would travel thousands of miles to admire it.

“Le Déjeuner des canotiers” is currently on show in the Musée d’Orsay’s exhibition “Renoir and Love. A Joyful Modernity (1865-1885)”, on display until July 19th 2026.

Shown here:
Auguste Renoir, “Le Déjeuner des canotiers”, 1880-1881 © Photo Courtesy of The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C

In April 1874, Edgar Degas took part in the first Impressionist exhibition and presented a ballet scene. He had been fa...
02/06/2026

In April 1874, Edgar Degas took part in the first Impressionist exhibition and presented a ballet scene. He had been fascinated with the world of ballet since the early 1860s, literally acting as an artist-reporter. With the help of a musician friend of his, Degas ventured backstage, where he undoubtedly found inspiration as nearly a thousand of his paintings and drawings are devoted to the dancers of the Opera.

Though today, Degas’s “danseuses” are admired, this was not always the case. In the 19th century, art was not supposed to represent reality but to transcend it. As such, the sometimes unattractive faces of these young ballerinas, with their tired or discouraged expressions, appeared crude to certain critics. It was Degas’s statue “The Little Dancer Aged Fourteen” which, when first exhibited in 1881, aroused the most intense criticism. The ballerina’s facial expression was described as be***al and vicious whilst the exposure of the young dancer’s body was deemed indecent. Yet it is Degas’s realistic depiction of bodies which explain the success of his dancers. For at the end of the 19th century, ballet was suffering a certain decline, and the (mostly male) public seemed to attend performances only to admire the pretty ballerinas. A cliché that isn’t one, as evidenced by the hidden story of “The Little Dancer Aged Fourteen”.

Her real name was Marie van Goethem. Born into a poor and illiterate family, she was sent to the Opéra to meet and seduce wealthy men, rather than to learn a trade. When Degas chose Marie as his model he knew the little girl’s story perfectly (without being among those who abused her). It was this reality which he chose to present to the Parisian public: a child dancer who seemed to offer herself up and before whom critics feigned outrage, for everyone knew the reality of the young ballet students at the Opéra in the 19th century.

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