The Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris holds the permanent collection of the City of Paris, modern and contemporary art from 1905 to the present, with particular strength in the Fauves, the School of Paris, and French art of the mid-twentieth century. The permanent collection is free, and the building is rarely crowded.
Its centrepiece is Raoul Dufy's La Fée Electricité, a frieze painting sixty metres wide that covers an entire curved wall. Commissioned for the 1937 World's Fair, it is the largest painting in the world. The Matisse room, with its two large versions of La Danse, the Modigliani portraits, and the Derain collection are each worth the visit on their own terms.
What you will see
La Fée Electricité. Raoul Dufy's frieze runs the length of one curved wall, sixty metres of gouache tracing the history of electricity, painted for the 1937 World's Fair. It is the kind of work that has to be stood in front of to be believed, and the room is built around it.
The painters. Matisse's two large versions of La Danse, made for the Barnes Foundation commission and shown here together, are among the few places their differences can be studied side by side. Around them the School of Paris, Modigliani, Soutine, Pascin and Chagall, the international artists who came to the city in the early twentieth century, and the Fauves, Derain, Vlaminck and Marquet, whose use of colour set everything that followed in motion.
La Fée Electricité · the School of Paris · the Fauves
Pépin's advice
This is the alternative to the Pompidou. With the Pompidou Centre closed for renovation, the Musée d'Art Moderne is the best place in Paris for modern art until it reopens, and its collection deserves the attention.
The permanent collection is free. No ticket is needed for the permanent collection, and it alone is worth the visit. Temporary exhibitions are priced separately and added only if you would like them.