At the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, like in many other cultural establishments in France, the staff are busy before the big day.

Closed since October 30 due to health restrictions linked to the Covid-19 epidemic, the museums reopen on Wednesday May 19, provided they respect a gauge of one person per eight square meters and limit access to visitors with of reservations.

"The exhibition has been waiting for the public for six months, hung on the walls", explains the director of the Orsay and Orangerie museums, Laurence des Cars, while the cultural institution will finally be able to show the public its flagship exhibition , "The origins of the world", initially scheduled for the month of November 2020.

"It's a bit of the excitement of the day before and we have a few works, a few important paintings that we are hanging today before welcoming the public," enthuses Cléa Bernardi, chief curator for painting at the Orsay Museum.

"We had a few works to hang up that were left on loan."

Employees of the Musée d'Orsay hang a painting as part of the preparation for the reopening of the museum in Paris, May 17, 2021. © Thomas Coex, AFP

The final arrangements are made under the supervision of museum staff and representatives of the Natural History Museum and the National Library of France (BNF), institutions which have loaned out many of the 300 or so pieces in the exhibition.

Bones, gigantic egg, sculptures and engravings, paintings and old books, so many heterogeneous objects which retrace how, throughout the 19th century, animal sciences influenced artists.

Despite the absence of the public during these long months, the teams of this great Parisian museum have not been idle.

"The closure was a period of intense work for the teams. They remained mobilized whatever the uncertainties to always project themselves into the idea of ​​a meeting with the public", underlines Laurence des Cars.

"Maintenance and protection have been lavished on the works", specifies the head of the department of the Museum's Works Agency, Odile Michel.

Mandatory reservation

Side reception of the public, the reservations of tickets, obligatory for the visitors, "are in significant increase for a few days", specifies the director of the museum, but "there will be no queue in front of the museum".

Laurence des Cars promises some 4,000 to 5,000 people that the establishment is preparing to receive each day "a free course and in very good conditions because of the gauges".

Gauges that are not to displease Jacques de Tarragon, director of another exhibition space very popular with the public, the Workshop of Lights, in the north-east of the capital, according to whom "less there is world, the more you are immersed ".

Here, too, the months of closure were put to good use.

"Our audiovisual teams were mobilized during the closure, to prepare for the future", explains Jacques de Tarragon.

"We already know the program for 2022."

"People need to get away from it all"

In this place, the concrete hall of a former factory, the screening of Salvador Dali's animated works is being prepared on pieces from the legendary group Pink Floyd.

The "immersive" exhibition, a specialty of this establishment opened in 2018, opens in a large room plunged into darkness, on the psychedelic notes of "Shine on you Crazy Diamond" by the British group.

"To be god", then chants the thundering voice of the Spanish painter.

A woman visits the Atelier des Lumières, in Paris on May 17, 2021, during a press preview of the exhibition “Dalí, the endless enigma” dedicated to the Spanish artist and scheduled to open on May 19 .

© Christophe Archambault, AFP

"It is an exhibition whose main theme is imagination and dreams", explains Jacques de Tarragon.

"People need to get away from it all."

With AFP

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