Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Angers, Art museum in Angers, France.
The Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Angers is housed in Logis Barrault and displays works spanning painting, sculpture, and drawing. The building originally served as a private residence and now contains multiple exhibition areas for permanent and rotating collections.
After the French Revolution, the Directory founded the Écoles centrales, and the Maine-et-Loire school moved into the Logis Barrault in 1797. Its museum opened there in May 1801 on the Louvre model; when the central schools were suppressed in 1803, the city kept the painting museum, which became municipal in 1805. The David d'Angers gallery opened in the former refectory in 1839, and the museum was devastated in 1944 before reopening in 1950.
The museum is housed in the logis Barrault, a private mansion on place Saint-Éloi, and forms part of the Toussaint complex with the fine-arts garden, the David d'Angers gallery and the municipal library. Its name comes from this mansion, not from the museum itself. The 1999–2004 renovation by Gabor Mester de Parajd restored the vaulted loggia, one of the house's peculiarities.
A visit pairs well with exploring Angers's old town since the museum is centrally located. It helps to allow enough time to see both the permanent collections and any current exhibitions.
The 1999–2004 restoration by architect Gabor Mester de Parajd reinstated the vaulted loggia, one of the logis Barrault's distinguishing features, after historical studies and on-site soundings. The same campaign, with museographer Antoine Stinco, added entirely new spaces for the collections.
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