A century of archive material
The Resource Centre holds archives of all the exhibitions staged at the museum since 1904 or held outside the museum in France or abroad.
Although the records are not uniform in content, these archives bring together documents describing each exhibition from its design phase to its reception by the public, including a synopsis, exhibition space design, correspondence, a list of exhibits, photographs, advertising material, press reviews, visitors’ book, etc.
The Agorha database
The majority of the Petit Palais exhibitions organised before 1951 are listed in the Répertoire des expositions dans les musées français (1900-1950) in the Agorha database, on the website of the INHA (French National Institute on the History of Art):
Archive material for some major exhibitions
• Italian art from Cimabue to Tiepolo (1935)
• Masters of Independent Art (1937)
• Masterpieces from the museums of Berlin (1951)
• Tutankhamen and his times (1967)
• English Romantic painting and the Pre-Raphaelites (1972)
• India, five thousand years of art (1978-1979)
• Five centuries of Spanish art from El Greco to Picasso (1987)
• The Art of Cartier (1989-1990)
• The Glories of Alexandria (1998)
• Baroque Brazil (1999-2000)
• China, the glory of the emperors (2000-2001)
• Painters of light, Sargent and Sorolla (2007)
See the video (in French) of the opening of the exhibition Tutankhamen and his times
Malraux inaugurates the exhibition Tutankhamen and his times - 04min01s - INA Archives