• The Réattu Museum, installed on the banks of the Rhone in the former Grand Priory of the Knights of Malta, displays works by old masters (17th/19th centuries), drawings and paintings by Picasso and contemporary art.  The museum organizes temporary exhibitions (about three each year) to present its new acquisitions to the public.  It is primarily interested in contemporary artistic creation.

THE SPIRIT OF THE SPOT

The building is located at the spot where the Roman cardo (main North/South street in the city) met the Rhone River. It has been devoted to the arts ever since Jacques Réattu, an Arlesian painter who won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1790, bought it after the French Revolution to be his residence and studio. He dreamed of offering residency to other artists to share with them the beauty and intensity of his landscape. This was 60 years before Vincent Van Gogh spoke of his « atelier du Midi » (« studio in the South »). Today’s museum has inherited this dream that never came true, along with the works and collections of Réattu.
The Réattu is a laboratory for creation.
Today the architecture of the spot acts as a catalyst for the museum’s policy, emphasizing relationships between the different collections and between art and life.
It incites artists to mix genres and to attract varied publics, thus permitting the museum to act as a « laboratory » where the artist plays the most important role.


IMPORTANT DATES IN THE HISTORY OF THE REATTU


• 1868 Birth of the museum
  The museum was created in 1868, and exposed the collections and the works of Jacques Réattu.
  After World War II the Réattu started specializing in contemporary art and exposed Zadkine, Richier and especially Picasso.
• 1965 The first photography collection in a Fine-Arts museum
  In 1965 the photographer Lucien Clergue suggested to the curator, Jean-Maurice Rouquette, that he create a photography collection, the first in a Fine-Arts museum in France.
• 1971 The Picasso Donation
  After his second exhibition at the museum, Picasso showed his appreciation of the city by offering 57 drawings, a sort of  painter’s « diary ».
• 1980 The first grant for St. Trophime’s cloister
  With Toni Grand, the msueum initiates a policy of grants to sculptors and photographers who accept to create works in harmony with the heritage monuments of the city.

THE PERMANENT COLLECTION

• 12 rooms are dedicated to Jacques Réattu : his own historical paintings, revolutionary allegories or theatre scenery ; his collections (mainly 17th-century paintings) ; works done by friends, relatives or collaborators (such as The Seamstress’ Shop by his uncle Antoine Raspal)
• 3 rooms present the drawings and paintings by Picasso
• The other spaces (courtyard, loggia, chapel, etc.) expose sculptures by Germaine Richier and Ossip Zadkine and the contemporary collections (Alechinsky, Toni Grand, Bernard Pagès, etc.), or house temporary exhibits.
• One room is devoted to photography
• The department of sound art settled in the museum places this one in pioneer’s position. www.phonurgia.org

   

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  The Arlaten Museum, the ethnographical museum administered by the Bouches-du-Rhone Department, is housed in the former Laval-Castellane town house, dating back to the 15th century.  The museum was created in 1896 by Frédéric Mistral, a Provençal regionalist writer, and contains costumes, furniture, tools, objects relating to religious and superstitious traditions, that illustrate life in Provence during the 19th century.

     

  
  
  

• THE CAMARGUE MUSEUM
  In 1973 the Camargue Regional Natural Park Foundation acquired some of the buildings and land composing the Mas du Pont-de-Rousty for the purpose of creating the Camargue Museum.  The museum is housed in the former sheep barn. Its displays trace the evolution of the landscapes and human activities from the time of the geological formation of the Rhone River delta right up to the 20th century.   One section depicts life in a typical 19th-century Camargue « mas » or farmhouse.
     A 3.5-km long walking trail allows you to discover the contemporary agricultural activities of the Camargue : systems of water control, vine- and rice-growing, sea-salt production, reed marshes, with the accent on environmental protection.