An exhibition on the Alps as a frontier

It was 2012: the plans-reliefs were the subject of a high-profile and very expensive exhibition at the Grand Palais. At the time we wrote an article: "Musée des Plans-Reliefs: an exhibition. After it, the flood?" In it we questioned the value of an exhibition that we predicted would lead to nothing, and that has led to... nothing. While the Ministry of Culture has provided the museum with the means to carry out restoration and museographic work, and it is always visited by a significant number of visitors (170 000 per year), its collections - those that have not been sent to Lille - are still in storage, and the empty spaces theoretically intended to house a large part of them are still awaiting a hypothetical project (ill. 1).

1. The former exhibition rooms for the plan-reliefs around the courtyard of honour of the
Invalides, still waiting for the museum to be enlarged
Photo: Didier Rykner

See the image in its page

The Musée des Plans-Reliefs is something of an outcast among French national museums. Although it is housed in the Hôtel des Invalides, its existence and activities are barely visible there, mainly because of the overwhelming presence of the Musée de l’Armée. Moreover, it seems that the latter would like to take over the plan-reliefs collections and merge the two establishments into a single entity. This idea would appear to be incompatible with conserving a royal collection as a whole, which has already been severely damaged by history. Particularly as the plan-reliefs, although they have a significant military component, were not created solely for this purpose.
Be that as it may, the exhibition spaces still available are much coveted by the Musée de l’Armée. However, there is an urgent need to return them to their former function of displaying plan-reliefs, which they performed between 1777 and the early 1980s, when part of the collection was disastrously moved from Paris to Lille, only to return with fourteen models missing.