The Musée d’Orsay, one of Paris’s most popular museums, will rename itself after Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who served as France’s President from 1974 to 1981 and was integral in the institution’s creation. The museum will now be called the Musée d’Orsay–Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.
Giscard d’Estaing effectively made it possible for the French state to open the Musée d’Orsay, which is considered a destination for 19th-century art and is known worldwide for its Impressionist paintings by French artists.
During the 1960s, a train station and a hotel known as the Gare d’Orsay were threatened with demolition. In 1977, Giscard d’Estaing approved plans to turn the site into a museum. Alongside the shift at the Orsay, the Musée de l’Orangerie, a Paris museum that is home to Claude Monet’s expansive Nymphéas paintings, will also now bear Giscard d’Estaing’s name.
Rachida Dati, the mayor of Paris’s seventh arrondissement where the Musée d’Orsay is located, and Valérie Pécresse, the president of the regional council of Île-de-France, are the two French politicians who called for the change. Both said that the museum should be called Musée d’Orsay-Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. “I ask the State that this prestigious establishment in the 7th arrondissement now bears his name!” Rachida Dati, the mayor of the district where the Musée d’Orsay is located, wrote on Twitter at that time.