Works by neo-classical and modern artists such as Renoir, Rodin, Klein, Warhol, Picasso, Modigliani, Braque and Dalí are also exhibited in the museum. The Gods and Goddesses Gallery, on the first floor, displays Greek and Roman bronze and marble statues, heads and busts, pottery, glass and silverware, an extensive collection of coins and an antique jewellery display case. The People and Personalities Gallery on the ground floor presents busts and statues of historical figures from ancient Greece and Rome, their influence highlighted by sculptures of Sosno, Arman, Quinn and Hirst.
The MACM is spread over four floors chronologically from the crypt to the second floor as follows: The Egyptian Gallery, in the crypt, depicts the theme of the afterlife with funerary masks, numerous other ancient artefacts and a sarcophagus, punctuated with works from Chagall, Calder, Rubens and Cocteau. On 29 October 2019, Levett consigned for sale at Christie's a marble statue of the Emperor Hadrian from his collection, known as the Cobham Hall Hadrian, to benefit the Museum. Levett is also an Honorary Fellow of The Ashmolean Museum, an honorary fellow of Wolfson College Oxford and a member of the Oxford University Chancellors Court of Benefactors. He is a member of the Arms and Armour Committee at The Metropolitan Museum of New York and member of The Board of Visitors at The Ashmolean Museum Oxford and is a past board member of The Hadrian’s Wall Trust. He has aided curatorial funding at The Ashmolean, The British Museum, and The British School at Rome.Īs well as this, he has funded renovation works at The Charterhouse Museum London, Charterhouse School Surrey, The National Gallery and the chapel Notre Dame de Vie in Mougins, and has sponsored conferences at King’s College London, Senate House UCL and at The Mougins Museum. He has funded archaeological works in the UK, Spain, Italy and Egypt and sponsored academic scholarships at Wolfson College and The Ruskin School of Art in Oxford. This dialogue and fusion between ancient and modern is particularly clear in the museum where, for example, depictions of the Greek Goddess Aphrodite by Warhol, Dalí and Yves Klein accompany 1st and 2nd century AD depictions of the Goddess, in marble and in bronze.įounder, Christian Levett, a philanthropist in the field, sponsored multiple exhibitions at The British Museum, Royal Academy, National Gallery, Sir John Soane’s Museum and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Thus works by Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Damien Hirst and others are included in the museum alongside their ancient inspirations. The interior was entirely renovated to display the collection while the façade remains in its original style.Īlthough the majority of objects on display are antiquities, the museum embraces a concept of displaying ancient, neo-classical, modern and contemporary art side by side to show the pervasive and lasting influence of the ancient world. The building itself used to be the village prison in medieval times, it was then turned into a mill before becoming a private residence in the 1950s. The Musée de Mougins was created by remodelling a 600m 2 medieval edifice to house his collection. A collector since childhood, in 2009 he formed the museum to place his antiquity and classical art collection on public display. The founder of the museum is Christian Levett, a British investment manager with an interest in history and art. The collection also includes works by artists who spent time in Mougins, such as Francis Picabia, Jean Cocteau, Man Ray, and Pablo Picasso (who spent the final 12 years of his life in Mougins village). The ancient artworks are interspersed with paintings, drawings, and sculptures by artists such as Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, Raoul Dufy, Paul Cézanne, Auguste Rodin, Salvador Dalí, Andy Warhol, Marc Quinn, Antony Gormley, and Damien Hirst, and others. The museum’s large and diverse collection of antiquities includes Roman, Greek and Egyptian sculpture, vases, coins, and jewellery, and the world’s largest private collection of ancient arms and armour.
The museum has won several international awards and has loaned dozens of objects to other museums and university exhibitions all over the world. The MACM opened to the public in June 2011. It is 30 minutes from Nice airport and 15 minutes from the centre of Cannes. The MACM, the Mougins Museum of Classical Art (Musée d’Art Classique de Mougins) is an art museum located in the village of Mougins, in the Alpes-Maritimes department, France.