PARIS.- The Musée d’Orsay and Musée de l’Orangerie announced that in 2014 more than 4,300,000 visitors came to see their exhibitions and permanent collections in situ and that nearly 1,400,000 foreign visitors discovered their masterpieces in Rome, Seoul, Tokyo and Fort Worth, Texas.

Indeed, the Musée d'Orsay ended the year with 3,500,000 visitors, similar to figures for 2013 despite the lack of additional late night openings at the end of December. The Van Gogh/Artaud exhibition (11 March – 6 July 2014) was attended by an all-time record of 654,000 visitors (i.e. a daily average of 6,374 people in 101 days of operation). The Gustave Doré. L’imaginaire au pouvoir [Gustave Doré: The Power of the Imagination] exhibition surprised everyone with a total of 305,000 visitors in less than 3 months.

For its part, the number of visitors to the Musée de l’Orangerie stabilised at 800,000. After a record number of 900,000 visitors in 2013 thanks to the huge success of the Frida Kahlo/Diego Rivera exhibition, the museum returned to 2012 levels of attendance and succeeded in attracting 250,000 visitors to the ambitious Emile Bernard (1868-1941) exhibition, while over 220,000 visitors discovered the Musée d’Orsay collections of drawings through Les archives du Rêve. Carte blanche à Werner Spies [Archives of the Dream: Carte blanche for Werner Spies].

The international influence of the Musée d’Orsay and Musée de l’Orangerie continued to develop as more than 1,355,000 visitors were able to discover the masterpieces of our collections in Rome, Seoul, Tokyo and Fort Worth. The exhibition La naissance de l’impressionnisme : la liberté de peindre [The Birth of Impressionism: the Freedom to Paint] presented at the National Art Center in Tokyo (9 July - 20 October 2014) proved a great success with 710,000 visitors.

The Bonnard (1867-1947). Peindre l’Arcadie [Bonnard (1867-1947).Painting Arcadia] exhibition presented at the Musée d'Orsay from 17 March 2015 will be the major event for spring 2015, before the Italian Season which will unite both museums in mid-April with Dolce Vita ? Art décoratif italien 1900-1940 [Dolce Vita: Decorative Italian Art 1900-1940] at Orsay and the discovery of the sculptor Adolfo Wildt (1868-1931). Le dernier symboliste [Adolfo Wildt (1868-1931). The last Symbolist] at the Orangerie.