Boasting some 150,000 objects, the collections are privileged testaments to the French art of living, the savoir-faire of its craftsmen and industrialists, the research and creativity of its artists, the passion of its collectors, the generosity of our donors and the desire to pass these riches on to others.

There is not a single technique, material or type of object that cannot be found in the MAD inventories: tiepin, escritoire, doll’s house, scenic wallpaper, stained glass, wood, enamel, plastic, shark’s skin and amaranth… the list is endless. Many criteria governed the selection of some 6,000 objects for permanent display, including their exemplarity, use, economy, craftsmanship, prowess and symbolism.

To enable the public to explore all these aspects, two different itineraries of the collections were devised:

• The first is chronological: this is the only museum in France which can offer such a vast panorama of the decorative arts from the Middle Age to the present day. The team of curators’ joint reflection resulted in indispensable shifts in emphasis in the light of scientific research and the new interests which have emerged in recent decades and led to an evolution in our way of seeing. Thus the 19th-century collections, particularly from 1850 to 1880, and the 20th-century collections have had their exhibit spaces doubled, keeping in mind the main objective of the museum "to show more but always to show better."


• The second is thematic, focusing on technical and stylistic concerns, and monographic displays punctuated by period rooms. The period rooms have always been one of the museum’s singularities. Even before it moved to the rue de Rivoli in 1905, they were a feature of the retrospective exhibitions organised by the Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs at the Palais de l’Industrie in 1882. In this museum, the ten period rooms, the fruit of gradual and often chance acquisitions, provide homogenous visions of a period in which elements are combined with great archaeological accuracy. They were created with the collaboration of the interior designer François Joseph Graf.

From September 26, 2019 to January 12, 2020, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs will pay tribute to the extraordinary life of the Maharaja of Indore, an Indian prince whose passion for the avantgarde led him to assemble one of the most important private collections of Modernist furniture and decorative arts in the world. This visionary patron of the arts became a central figure of the international elite and the European cultural milieu of the 1920s and 1930s. In 1930, he ordered the construction of the Manik Bagh Palace in his homecity of Indore, India, embracing the architectural techniques of the European Modernist movement and decorating the palace with designs by Modernist icons including Louis Sognot and Charlotte Alix, Jean Puiforcat, Eileen Gray and Le Corbusier. Moderne Maharajah, un mécène des années 1930 will showcase over 500 objects from the Manik Bagh Palace, evoking the artistic exchanges that existed between Europe and India thanks to the singular and legendary taste of the Maharaja of Indore. Presented in the Central Hall of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, these 500 pieces of Modern design will be exhibited together for the first time, alongside never-before-seen archival materials that document the legacy of the Maharaja and Maharani of Indore.