A dedicated museum for French Art Nouveau architect Hector Guimard (1867–1942) will open in Paris at the Hôtel Mezzara, a building he designed in 1910. The project is led by the nonprofit Le Cercle Guimard, which secured a 50-year lease on the state-owned property after two decades of advocacy. The museum will be funded by Hector Guimard Diffusion, a company founded by collector Fabien Choné, and will house the Cercle archives and around 100 works from Choné's collection, including ceramics, Métro entrances, and cast iron pieces. A virtual reality experience recreating Guimard's 1901 Humbert de Romans concert hall is also planned.
This matters because Guimard, despite creating the iconic Art Nouveau entrances of the Paris Métro, has been largely neglected in his home country, where his style was historically criticized as "spaghetti style." The museum aims to revive his legacy and correct this oversight, highlighting his innovative modular design system for the Métro stations and his holistic approach to architecture as a fully designed lifestyle. The Hôtel Mezzara, the architect's only publicly owned residence, provides an authentic setting to showcase his work, which is now beloved internationally but remains underappreciated in France.