The Artist as Curator: Edgar Degas' Maison-Musée

Scholars agree that Edgar Degas considered establishing a museum or donating his art collection to the French nation, but ultimately abandoned the idea. This article argues that while Degas never intended to found an official museum, his three-storey quarters that he arranged at 37 rue Victor-Massé functioned as an independent 'artist's house' or maison-musée typical of this modernist genre of display. Included were the artist's studio, his dwelling quarters and private museum, all curated by the artist himself. Like the autonomous group exhibitions of 1874–1886, of which Degas had been a main organizer, his domestic displays mark an important example of exhibition space in the context of modern French artists' resistance to state-run exhibition policy and art institutions.