MuMa, Musée d'Art Moderne André Malraux, Le Havre

MuMa, the Musée d'Art Moderne André Malraux, is the art museum of Le Havre in Normandy, a glass building at 2 Boulevard Clemenceau at the entrance to the port. It holds one of France's largest Impressionist collections outside Paris and the world's largest group of works by Eugène Boudin. It suits art lovers, Monet fans and visitors exploring the Normandy coast.

Le Havre's post-war museum, opened by Malraux in 1961

MuMa was one of the major projects of Le Havre's reconstruction after the Second World War. It was inaugurated on 24 June 1961 by André Malraux, France's first Minister of Culture, whose name it carries. The building was designed by a team led by Guy Lagneau, with Raymond Audigier, Michel Weill and Jean Dimitrijevic. Its seaward facade is almost entirely glazed, so the light and views that drew many of the painters come straight into the galleries, and you can watch ships enter the port from inside.

Boudin, Monet and the Normandy coast

The collection runs from the fifteenth to the twentieth century and is strongest in painting linked to the Normandy coast. Eugène Boudin is represented by harbour and beach scenes such as the entrance to the Le Havre jetties in heavy weather (1895). Claude Monet, who grew up in Le Havre, appears with The Seine at Vétheuil (1878), Winter Sun at Lavacourt, Fécamp, Seaside (1881) and Water Lilies (1906).

Other works include Renoir's Portrait of Nini Lopez (1876), Courbet's The Wave (1869), paintings by Pissarro and Sisley, Matisse's Still Life with Pitcher, and Raoul Dufy, born in Le Havre, with Jeanne with Flowers (1907). The collection of Olivier Senn (1864 to 1959), given in 2004, added many more Impressionist and early modern works. The museum's online exhibition, L'estuaire de la Seine, l'invention d'un paysage, explores how painters turned the estuary into a subject.