Hector Guimard, who designed the iconic Art Nouveau metro entrances in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century, is about to be honoured with a dedicated museum. After being forgotten and even criticised for years, he will now be put centre stage in a building of his own design, starting from the end of 2027.
When walking through the French capital, the old Art Nouveau entrances to the metro stations are an integral part of the cityscape. Overall, 88 iron-and-glass ‘Metropolitain’ constructions remain, where there were once 167 when Guimard was asked to design them at the start of the 1900s.
“It may be surprising to foreign visitors but the French have never really liked art nouveau. There was great opposition to Guimard’s Métro entrances. While visitors saw them as marvellous symbols of the belle époque Métro, Parisians criticised it as what they called spaghetti style and couldn’t understand why tourists liked them,” Fabien Choné, a Guimard collector and head of Hector Guimard Diffusion, a company involved in establishing the new museum, told The Guardian.
By 1913, the transport authorities in Paris no longer used Guimard’s designs, and when he died in New York in 1942 after fleeing from the Nazis his work was nearly forgotten. Despite the efforts of his widow Adeline, who returned to Paris in 1948 and tried to honour the furniture, public infrastructure, and nearly 50 residential buildings left behind by her late husband, much of his work was disregarded and even destroyed.
While Adeline tried to bequeath their own art nouveau home, the Hôtel Guimard, along with its contents, both to the state and to the city, both of them turned down her offer and the building was turned into residential apartments after her death; many of its original fittings were lost over time.
A newfound love for Guimard
In recent years, however, Guimard fans have been trying to bring his legacy back to life. The association Le Cercle Guimard was created 23 years ago in order to preserve his works and documents, and has been in talks with the city of Paris ever since in order to obtain recognition for the late architect’s pieces of art.
“After the Second World War, Guimard was completely forgotten. Art Nouveau no longer interested people in the urban design of the 1960s, and many of his pieces were destroyed. The revival started in 1970 with an exhibition in New York, but it was a step-by-step process. We see this museum as repairing an injustice done to Guimard,” Nicolas Horiot, an architect and president of Le Cercle Guimard, told The Guardian.
Hôtel Mezzara, located in Paris’s 16th arrondissement and designed by Guimard in 1910 for his friend Paul Mezzara, has now been chosen as the location for the future Guimard museum. The building itself still has many of the original Art Nouveau features, and inside, visitors will be able to get acquainted with his furniture, building plans, and other work. In the same neighbourhood, his own private house and other projects are still visible, at least from the outside.
However, as the building has been used for a multitude of projects over the years, it will first undergo a €6 million renovation, with the opening scheduled for late 2027 or early 2028.
