Controverses sur l’aménagement d’un musée des Arts décoratifs à Paris au XIXe siècle

Controversy around the organization of a museum of decorative arts in Paris during the nineteenth century. The idea of a museum of decorative arts is closely linked to the new awareness of the radical changes witnessed during the nineteenth century in industrial production and in the relations between industrial and artistic production. The earliest projects for the museum insisted on the pedagogical aspects of the presentation, designed to educate public taste and that of artists and workers in particular. The author of this article studies the different projects which followed one another during the nineteenth century, beginning with that of Amédée Couder and Jean Feuchère towards the end of the 1840s. Via the museum — comprising a school, a library, a collection of plaster casts, etc. — , this project aimed to train the artists of the new industrial era. In 1852 the sculptor Jules Klagmann presented a report on the art industries in France, but this report had no results. In 1873 the architect and engineer J . Gabriel Davioud suggested that a collection should be integrated into a new school of applied arts. The « Union centrale des Beaux-Arts appliqués à l’Industrie » (central union for fine arts applied to industry) already had the beginnings of such a collection and in 1877 the « Société du Musée des Arts décoratifs » was founded to install this collection in the Palais de l’Industrie at Paris. Henceforth the discussion was essentially concerned with how the collection should be classified and how the pieces should be presented. The article examines the projects put forward by Louvrier de Lajolais and Georges Lafenestre in 1877 and by Georges Berger in 1878, this last aiming at a « professional museum ». In 1886, finally, Germain Bapst suggested a classification by ensembles and the organization of the subject matter into sections, taking into account the tastes of a public which was no longer limited to one of artisans and workers. When the museum finally opened in 1905, its presentation was consequently closer to that of traditional fine art museums and the different projects with exagerated technological implications had been forgotten.Froissart Pezone Rossella. Controverses sur l’aménagement d’un musée des Arts décoratifs à Paris au XIXe siècle. In: Histoire de l'art, N°16, 1991. Les arts décoratifs. pp. 55-65