Sylvain Amic

The Musée d'Orsay director, who has died aged 58, 'wanted everyone to be able to access the marvels of art'

- Patrick Kidd

It is one of the greatest cultural honours in France, perhaps second only to director of the Louvre, to be entrusted with the treasures of the Musée d'Orsay.

The gallery, built in a former Beaux-Arts railway station on the Left Bank of the Seine, only opened in 1986 but it contains much of France's artistic glory, from the dawn of the Second Republic in 1848 to the start of the first world war.

Sylvain Amic said it had been “his dream” to be appointed as its seventh director in April 2024, especially to be handling the conclusion of the six-year Orsay Grand Ouvert project to mark its 40th anniversary. His death from heart failure last week means he did not achieve his mission of rehanging a familiar cast of characters that includes Degas’s chorus singers, Millet’s gleaners, Boudin’s bathers, Renoir’s Montmartre dancers and a rare American interloper - Whistler’s mother.

The collection also includes sculptures by Rodin and Gauguin, Van Gogh's Starry Night and a choice of déjeuners sur l'herbe, depending whether you want your guests naked (Manet) or clothed (Monet). Almost 5 million visitors last year went to the Orsay and its sister gallery, the Musée de l'Orangerie in the Tuileries Gardens, which Amic also ran, and which holds Monet’s Water Lilies.

“The Musée d’Orsay is a republican museum, a national asset that must be restored to the nation as a whole,” he told