The Brest Museum of Fine Arts will outsource its reserves

Brest residents will have to wait before the – undetermined – reopening of the Brest Museum of Fine Arts. Like every beginning of the year, the museum closed its doors to carry out maintenance work and upkeep of the collections. But at the end of this inspection, traces of mold were noted on certain paintings exhibited in the galleries. “During the annual closure of the museum, a fungal infestation was detected on the first floor of the building on several works exhibited in the museum galleries”announced the community.

The City, in conjunction with the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs of Brittany (Drac), requested “different specialists in the restoration of works of art in order to carry out a broad consultation in expertise”. A progress update on the situation and the steps taken will be presented by the museum during the month of March.

Fungal infestations are common at the Brest museum. “Current conservation conditions are such that fungi sometimes appear on paintings”explained Yann Guével, the vice-president of Brest Métropole. To remedy this, the museum has planned the construction of a new conservation center to accommodate the reserves of the Museum of Fine Arts. The new building, which will extend over 1,500 to 2,000 m2, will be built in the Vern activity zone, near the city center. Upgraded to current standards and equipped with restoration workshops, it will ensure the proper conservation of the 15,000 works in the museum’s collection. The forecast budget amounts to 9 million euros, financed by Brest Métropole with the support of the State. The work should begin in 2026 and be completed in 2028. The moving of the works is planned for 2029.

The construction of this new building will free up space within the current museum. Destroyed in 1941, the building was rebuilt in 1968 and has never undergone major work. The museum tour will be extended into the old library, which has been unoccupied since 2016. This work is estimated at 30 million euros. An Architecture and Heritage Interpretation Center (CIAP) will also be created.

Opened in 1877, the Brest Museum of Fine Arts, “with encyclopedic ambition”, was originally made up of donations of seascape paintings from Brest painters. Objects from the Far East, Africa and Oceania were also present in the collections. Bombing during World War II destroyed many artifacts. After the war, a new museum was planned and the collection was enriched with a donation of ethnographic objects from the city of Glasgow in 1948. Today, the collections, beyond a focus on the navy and the Breton-inspired painting, are also made up of paintings by Nabis, as well as a modern section devoted to abstraction artists.

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