France is a country of museums, but there are so many more than just the big Parisian goliaths, the Louvre and the Pompidou and the Musée d’Orsay. This France 24 video will take you to visit two of the lesser-known gems of the French art world.
In a collection of four Renaissance-era mansions sits the Museum of Agen, which hosts more than 3,000 precious works of art, so many that a large number of them aren’t even on display, but kept in the museum’s archives. Nathalie Lacroix, head of the museum’s educational services, gives a tour, explaining the unique architectural anomalies of the museum, while curator Adrien Enfedague illuminates the often eclectic collection.
Next, we go to the converted monastery that is now the Eugène Boudin Museum of Honfleur. This gorgeous port city has inspired generations of artists, Boudin included, and contemporary painters and nostalgics still visit the scenes of his best work, to take in the shifting landscape and try to translate it onto canvas.
“Boudin tried to capture the passing of time, the drifting of the clouds, and the way the light changes perceptions.”
