No charge for Four Arts members
Creating Legacies: This series explores enduring family businesses, influential art collections, and meaningful philanthropy through the perspectives of those who built them. Each speaker shares the decisions, discipline, and determination behind preserving something worth passing on.
In Paris’s 8th arrondissement, steps from the Parc Monceau, stands one of Europe’s most remarkable and little-known house museums. The Musée Nissim de Camondo was
built by banker and collector Moïse de Camondo as a modernized homage to the Petit Trianon at Versailles between 1911 and 1914. Its extraordinary 18th-century collection remains housed within an intact private residence, offering something increasingly rare: a genuine sense of how beauty was once lived with, not merely displayed. The house also stands as a poignant memorial. Moïse de Camondo dedicated it to the memory of his beloved son Nissim, an aviator who lost his life in combat during the First World War. Upon his death, Moïse bequeathed both the mansion and its collections to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, ensuring their preservation for future generations. Opened to the public in 1936, the museum would later become entwined with another chapter of the family’s tragic history when Moïse’s daughter Béatrice and her family were deported in 1943. Bénédicte Gady, Director of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, will join Four Arts member Russell Kelley in conversation to explore the museum as a work of art and a place of memory, and what it means to preserve so singular a heritage.