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Lyon

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FRANCE

LYON MUSEUMS

The Museum of Fine Arts of Lyonis is a municipal museum of fine arts in the French city of Lyon. It is housed near place des Terreaux in a former Benedictine convent of the 17th and 18th centuries. Its collections range from ancient Egypt antiquities to the Modern art period and make the museum one of the most important in Europe. It hosts important exhibitions of art. Recently there have been exhibitions of works by Georges Braque, Henri Laurens and one on the works of Théodore Géricault.

The paintings department has European paintings of 14th to mid 20th century paintings. They are arranged chronologically and by major schools in 35 rooms. The collection features:

Ancient French painting (16th to 18th century) (Nicolas Poussin, Simon Vouet, Philippe de Champaigne, Eustache Lesueur, Charles Le Brun, Hyacinthe Rigaud, François Boucher, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Claude Joseph Vernet etc.

19th century French painting (Ingres, Géricault, Delacroix, Degas, Renoir, Manet, Morisot, Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh etc.

14th to 18th century Italian painting (Perugino, Lorenzo Costa, Veronese, Tintoretto, Correggio, Guido Reni, Domenichino, Pietro da Cortona, Guercino, Salvator Rosa, Luca Giordano, Canaletto, Francesco Guardi, Giandomenico Tiepolo etc.

Ancient Spanish painting (mainly 17th century) (El Greco, Jusepe de Ribera, Francisco de Zurbarán etc.

Ancient German, Flemish and Dutch painting (mainly 16th and 17th centuries) (Lucas Cranach the Elder, Quentin Metsys, Rubens, Anthony Van Dyck, Jacob Jordaens, Rembrandt etc.

20th century painting (including Edouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, Georges Rouault, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, Amedeo Modigliani, Fernand Léger, Joan Miro, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Francis Bacon and painters of the Paris School etc.

Front entrance to the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon
Photograph taken by Alorange

At the heart of the abbey's former cloister is now a municipal garden, right in the centre of the town, on the peninsula. It is decorated with several 19th century's statues:

Two sculptures by Rodin : The shadow, or Adam (1902) and The temptation of Saint Anthony (1900).

A sculpture by Léon-Alexandre Delhomme representing Democrites meditating on the seat of the soul (1864)

A sculpture by Emile Antoine Bourdelle representing Carpeaux at work (1909)

a Venus (1918-1928) by Aristide Maillol

an Odalisque (1841) by James Pradie

The main part of the collection is displayed in two divided sections : at the ground floor for Medieval and Renaissance sculptures and in the old baroque refectory, which has been renovated, for 19th century and early 20th century sculptures.

The museums objects d'art collection ranges from the Middle Ages to the 20th century and includes:

Byzantine ivories

Renaissance faience and maiolica

Art Nouveau room of Hector Guimard,

Islamic art

Far East ceramics

Chinese, Korean and Japanese stoneware (since 1917) - rare pieces illustrating the tea ceremony, displayed next to the Art Nouveau ceramics they inspired.

For more information and enquiries please contact Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, 20 place des Terreaux, F-69001 - Lyon, Tel: +33 (0)4 72 10 17 40, E-mail: contact@mba-lyon.fr

Musée Gadagne, facade of the museum
Photograph taken by Gonedelyon

The Musée Gadagne is a museum located in the center of the Vieux Lyon, in the Saint-Jean quarter, in the 5th arrondissement of Lyon. It is made up of two museums, the Musée d'histoire de Lyon (Museum of Lyon History) and the Musée des marionnettes du monde (Museum of world puppets). Since 1921, the hotel has hosted the Historical Museum of Lyon. It shows the collections previously installed at the Hôtel de Ville, Lyon until 1857. This museum consists of 80,000 objects, within 30 rooms, over four floors. It traces the cultural history of Lyon since the Middle Ages until the nineteenth century, displaying archaeological remains, sculptures, paintings, furniture, and pottery. There are also many maps, drawings and engravings to illustrate the growth of the city and the construction of its main buildings.

The Musée des marionnettes du monde has in the past included a collection of 2,000 puppets. On the third floor there is a small theatre of a 150-seat capacity, and the fourth floor provides access to the garde of the museum.

For more information and enquiries please contact Musées Gadagne, 1 place du petit Collège - 69005 Lyon, Tel: +33(0)4 78 42 03 61, E-mail: gadagne@mairie-lyon.fr

The Musée de l'Imprimerie is a museum in 2nd arrondissement of Lyon, whose main missions are to enhance, conserve, document and value the heritage of books and graphic. In 2007, the museum had 16,819 visitors.The museum has various printed works by the famous Renaissance Lyon printers including Sébastien Gryphe, Guillaume Rouillé and Bernard Salomon. It shows the beginnings of Western printing from the fifteenth century to the twentieth century.

For more information and enquiries please contact Musée de l'imprimerie de Lyon 13, rue de la poulaillerie, 69002 - Lyon, Tel: +33 (0)4 78 37 65 98 E-mail: mil@mairie-lyon.fr

Musée de l'Imprimerie, entrance to the museum

The Musée d'art contemporain de Lyon is a museum devoted to the contemporary art, located in the 6th arrondissement of Lyon, in the Cité Internationale, next the cinema, in front of the Parc de la Tête d'Or. It had over 42,000 visitors in 2007.The building it is housed in today was designed by Renzo Piano. he museum's philosophy is to present works created by artists directly on the site. The permanent collection, which is the largest European group installations ever assembled in a museum, alternates with temporary exhibitions. Between each exhibition, a nearly six-month closure per year is necessary to put in place the future exhibition.It has already organized over a hundred exhibitions.

Current and future exhibitions:

Olivier Mosset (11 September 2010 - 2 January 2011)

Trisha Brown (11 September 2010 - 2 January 2011)

Bruce Nauman (11 September 2010 - 2 January 2011)

For more information and enquiries please contact Cité Internationale, 81 quai Charles de Gaulle, 69463 Lyon cedex 06, France, Tel: +33 4 72 69 17 17 or +33 4 72 69 17 18

Musée d'art contemporain de Lyon, facade of the museum
Photograph taken by Gonedelyon

The Gallo-Roman Museum of Lyon is a museum on the Gallo-Roman civilisation in Lyon. Previously located in the heart of the Roman city and now sited near the city's Roman theatre on the Fourvière hill, half-buried into the hillside on the edge of the archaeological site. Internally, it is formed of a concrete spiral ramp descending and branching out into the display rooms. It is managed and operated by the Rhone department jointly with the archaeological museum of Saint-Romain-en-Gal. As well as displaying its own permanent collections of Roman, Celtic and pre-Roman material (inscriptions, statues, jewellery, everyday objects), a plan-relief of the ancient town and scale models of its major monuments such as the theatre and the Odeon, it also regularly hosts temporary exhibitions.

For more information and enquiries please contact Musée Gallo-Roma, 17 rue Cléberg, 69005 - Lyon, Tel: +33 04 72 38 49 30, E-mail: fourviere@rhone.fr

Gallo-Roman Museum of Lyon
Photograph taken by B.KERR