NEW YORK, NY.- Vincent van Gogh died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the Paris suburb of Auvers-sur-Oise in July 1890. He succumbed to serious mental illness and to a consuming sense of despair. Yet the two months he spent in Auvers were extraordinarily prolific ones: He produced more than 70 paintings, including a few that today are considered among his greatest masterpieces.

The Musée d’Orsay in Paris is staging the first exhibition dedicated to those final months in Auvers. Co-produced with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, it features about 48 paintings and 40 drawings and prints by the Dutch prodigy, and promises to be another crowd-puller for the museum — a converted train station that is one of the world’s finest museums of the 19th century.

Like every other major museum, however, Orsay needs to keep up with the times and offer its 3.3 million annual visitors a smoother experience. So it is moving its research and educational facilities into a building next door and revamping the main building. The esplanade will be refurbished; visitors will no longer have to line up for tickets outside; and the permanent collections will be rearranged and rehung. The museum will remain open while the changes are made; work is scheduled to start in 2025 and finish by the end of 2027.

The revamp is led by Christophe Leribault, president of the Musée d’Orsay and its sister institution the Musée de l’Orangerie since 2021, succeeding Laurence des Cars (now president of the Louvre). He previously ran the Musée Delacroix and the Petit Palais in Paris.

In a recent video interview, Leribault spoke about van Gogh, the modernization of the Musée d’Orsay, and French sensitivities to “wokeness.” The following conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Q: Can you talk about the van Gogh exhibition on at the museum now?

A: What the exhibition reveals is that the final months of van Gogh were not a period of depression in which he did nothing. They were a feverish time during which he produced a painting a day. And these were very different paintings: portraits, landscapes, village views, field views, with incredible splashes of color, although they’re maybe less colorful than his paintings of southern France — St.-Rémy-de-Provence or Arles. There are far fewer yellows, no big sunflower bouquets.

Van Gogh, it has to be said, was pretty antisocial. As an artist, he was quite unbearable. Yet he was very powerful, very inventive. And that comes across in the exhibition, which ends with his burial.

At his death, van Gogh is almost a celebrity. There are many condolence letters sent to his brother Theo by the likes of Claude Monet and Paul Signac.

Q: Van Gogh is also the star of Orsay’s permanent collection.

A: Yes, a lot of our present-day visitors look at Orsay’s “Starry Night” (1888), one of the many van Gogh paintings in our collection. We’re actually going to move van Gogh’s paintings into another gallery, because where they are now, there’s too much crowding around them.

Q: The Musée d’Orsay is at a turning point: It turns 40 in 2026. What are some of the new challenges you face?




A: The museum is very beautiful and interesting, with a great many masterpieces housed in a fantastic building. Yet I do believe that a museum needs to move forward and to evolve, and avoid being frozen in time.

The focus of the Musée d’Orsay is a particularly complex and crucial period, the 19th century, which is very much beloved of our visitors. We could very well leave things exactly as they are. But over time, we will become a bit passé, because the 19th century is more and more remote to the new generations. It’s no longer the last century: It’s the century before last.

The Musee d’Orsay must not be viewed as a train station with impressionist paintings hanging inside. The 19th century is an absolutely central period for an understanding of our present-day society, our contemporary culture. So many things are rooted in this period: economic and medical developments, scientific discoveries, photography, cinema, railways, transportation.

We remain, of course, an art museum. But to better appreciate and understand the artworks, a few more explanations can’t hurt. For example, when we show Orientalist paintings, we need to talk about colonialism and everything that came with it.

That doesn’t mean that we take down and store away paintings that are disturbing when viewed through the ideology of today. We need to show those works, but explain them in the context of where we are today.

When we complete the rehang of the museum, the opening sections will be dedicated to the universal exhibitions of the late 19th century, and to the revolutions of 1848 (in Europe).

Q: In France today, there’s resistance to what’s referred to as “le wokisme,” to political correctness. You’re reflecting identity politics and contemporary thinking in your rehang. How is that going to be perceived by French audiences?

A: As you know, we are a country that gets angry easily. I believe that the museum is exactly the right place for these kinds of discussions, because it’s somewhat outside the realm of social media. It’s a place where we spend an afternoon or a weekend, when we’re more available to read things and to look at them. We’re not in a “like” or “don’t like” exchange.

It’s important for museums to show the complexity of everything. That doesn’t mean issuing opinions on what people should think about this or that aspect of contemporary times: It means asking questions. A museum, an auditorium are places where we can discuss issues and go deeper into them.

Q: You have said that you’d like Orsay to be a great popular museum. What does that mean?

A: The idea is to not turn it into a museum that’s too exclusive. For it to be popular, it has to be accessible. Every work has to have a wall text that’s not too long. So we have to be careful what we say: The text has to be clear and not full of jargon.

We also have to make the place more festive and attractive. We’re going to organize more and more activities and entertaining shows in the museum’s central nave — including activities that are linked to the cultural programming around the 2024 Paris Olympics.

My aim is for visitors to want to come back — not just come to the Musée d’Orsay once to see the superb impressionist painters hanging next to the academic ones, but to experience a place where everything is regularly changing and constantly being reinterpreted.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.