Tours of Special Collections

Musée Cognacq-Jay: The 18th-century Good Life

This tour is available June 4 to July 20, 2008.
To inquire about availability for this tour, please email us.

1.5-hour tour.
Ernest Cognacq and Marie-Louise Jay made their fortune in a decidedly 20th-century way, by selling mass-produced goods in the very modern La Samaritaine department store. When it came to their own shopping tastes, however, the couple preferred the one-of-a-kind and the custom-made. Between 1900 and 1925, they amassed one of the finest private collections of French 18th-century painting, furniture, and objets d'art. On this tour you will see masterworks by Watteau, Nattier, Greuze, Boucher, Quentin de la Tour, Hubert Robert, and female artists like Elizabeth Vigee-Lebrun. You'll learn about 18th-century art in the domestic setting for which it was originally intended to be seen. Housed in the beautifully restored Hôtel Donon in the heart of the Marais, the Cognacq-Jay offers a splendid glimpse of the luxury of daily home life during the Ancien Régime.

Rates. 1.5-hour tour: €70 for individuals, or €60 per person for parties of two or more.

Read a more detailed profile of the Cognacq-Jay from our "Les Musée Moins Connus" series.

Sèvres: A History of Elegant Dining

1.5-hour tour, beginning at either 10am or 2pm.
To inquire about availability for this tour, please email us.

Gourmet meals are immediately associated with refined French style, thanks to elaborate rituals of dining, and to the precious objets d’art that have graced the French table for centuries. This tour explores those arts of the table at the Musée de Sèvres, France’s national museum of ceramics.

You will see some of the very first porcelain ever produced in Europe, as well as exquisite examples from the nearby workshop of Sèvres. Some royal highlights in this vast collection include pieces from Louis XV’s first table service, plates commissioned by Catherine II, and a curious bol sein from Marie-Antoinette’s tea service, which legend says was modelled after the queen’s own breast.

Royalty were not the only ones fascinated by the elegance of this “white gold” called porcelain. The success of Sèvres in particular has created a huge market for imitations. On this tour you’ll also learn some of the practical clues for distinguishing the real thing from the not so real.

Rates. 1.5-hour tour: €70 for individuals, or €60 per person for parties of two or more. Includes price of admission.

Musée Branly: A Global Voyage
1.5-hour tour
To inquire about availability for this tour, please email us.

The new Quai Branly Museum features the indigenous arts of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas in an innovative, kaleidoscopic building designed by Jean Nouvel. Despite the controversy surrounding its opening in 2006, Branly has proven to be a popular success, with some 1.7 million visiting the museum last year alone. Your private guide, an anthropologist and specialist in the arts of Western Polynesia, will help you navigate a global voyage through these extraordinarily diverse collections. You’ll see stunning objects ranging from an Amazonian feather headdress to an exquisite Ashanti gold weight from Africa. The tour’s object-by-object approach will help you to understand each selected work’s significance to the peoples who made them.

Rates. 1.5-hour tour: €70 for individuals, or €60 per person for parties of two or more. Includes price of admission.

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