Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MAMCS)

The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, known as the MAMCS, is Strasbourg’s answer to the question of what to do after the cathedral and the canals. It opened in 1998 in a bright, glass-fronted building on the banks of the river Ill, near the railway station, and it follows artistic creation from 1870 to the present day. The collection is broad and deliberately mixed, bringing together painters, sculptors, engravers, photographers and video artists. Among the names in the collection are Monet, Rodin, Gauguin, Picasso, Kandinsky, Niki de Saint Phalle, Nam June Paik, Bertrand Lavier and Clément Cogitore, and the featured works include Gustave Doré’s Christ Leaving the Praetorium, a monumental religious painting by an artist better known as an illustrator, Alfred Sisley’s view of the hills of La Celle near Saint-Mammès, and Bertrand Lavier’s Giulietta, a car sculpture that plays with the line between object and art. The museum presents three or four exhibitions a year, and its circuit pairs modern and contemporary works in a way that is regularly renewed, with a few interactive moments for visitors who like to take part. The building also houses an auditorium and the museum library, and a bookshop and a restaurant are on site, so it works well as a half-day outing when the weather is poor. Because the permanent display is regularly rearranged, repeat visitors often find new pairings and surprises, and the changing exhibitions give the museum a lively, contemporary edge that sits well beside the historic sights elsewhere in the city. Strasbourg’s municipal museums publish the visitor information, and this page links to the museum’s own page.