Apollo Awards 2024: Museum Opening of the Year

Fondation Bemberg, Toulouse
Reopened February 2024

Georges Bemberg (1915–2011) was born to a family of German origins in Buenos Aires and spent much of his childhood in Paris. That his collection of some 1,000 artworks should be in Toulouse is down to an act of municipal initiative. After Bemberg had established his foundation in 1993, the city’s mayor heard that he was looking for a home for the collection – and offered up the Hôtel d’Assézat, a 16th-century Italianate mansion in the old part of Toulouse. The Fondation Bemberg opened in 1995, but it has been – in the main and certainly outside France – a well-kept secret until now. After a deft three-year refurbishment, the museum reopened in February with a more spacious hang of works across its two main floors that presents the collection more coherently, without ironing out its most interesting quirks.

Bemberg was a collector of furniture and decorative arts as well as sculpture and painting – he was inspired in part by the Wallace Collection – but it is the latter that really comes to the fore in the new arrangement. Ana Debenedetti, who took over as the director of the institution in 2022, has said that the aim is to convey something of the personality of the founder to visitors. Bemberg led an exceedingly discreet life and said next to nothing about his acquisitions, but his tastes are easier to define now that Old Masters – Venetian portraits are a highlight – are on one floor and modern works on another. Along the chronological circulation are a few thematic moments that highlight the idiosyncrasies of what started out as a very private collection: a whole room devoted to Bonnard (Bemberg bought 31 works), and 10 Sickerts, which makes for the largest gathering of the latter artist’s work in France.

Many of the stuffier fixtures and fittings such as partitions, blocked-out windows and silk wall coverings have also been stripped out so that the works in this unusual private museum now lead a lighter, airier – and much more public – existence.