Art in the Family

Three generations of Maeghts have befriended and promoted artists, from Bonnard and Braque to young unknown talents. As the family—and legions of art lovers—celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Fondation Maeght, plans are under way to make it an even more magical destination.

Saint-Paul-de-Vence has long been the best-known medieval village on the Côte d’Azur. Perched atop a steep, pine-covered hill and teeming with art galleries, it owes some of its fame to the 1951 wedding of actors Yves Montand and Simone Signoret. Yet by far the biggest contributor to Saint-Paul’s renown is the Fondation Marguerite et Aimé Maeght, the modern-art mecca that celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.

As foundations go, Maeght has a rather unusual history. It was built from scratch by art dealers Aimé and Marguerite Maeght less than a decade after they lost their second son to leukemia. Though paralyzed by grief and despair, they were coaxed by some of the greatest talents of the day—Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, Joan Miró—to create a place where artists could meet, mingle and work. Many left permanent traces of their passage: Miró designed a “Labyrinthe” dotted with odd-looking creatures; Alberto Giacometti parked his skinny bronze statues on the terrace; Braque decorated the pool with fish mosaics; and Alexander Calder created a site-specific stabile.

Since Aimé Maeght’s death in 1981, the Foundation has been kept alive by the founders’ surviving son, Adrien, now in his eighties, and by his children—without a penny of French government support. The ticketed exhibitions held every summer generate four-fifths of its annual budget and are a major draw for tourists who flock to the Côte d’Azur in high season.

For its 50th birthday, the Foundation is planning a mega-show of works by many of the artists who were displayed there during Aimé and Marguerite’s lifetime and afterward. “We will borrow from French, European and American private collections as well as museums, since many of the works owned by my parents and grandparents are now in museums or in major collections,” explains the founders’ granddaughter Isabelle, who is on the Foundation’s board (read interview, ).

 Visitors will discover a century’s worth of modern and contemporary art, from the post-Impressionist views of Pierre Bonnard and the boundary-pushing creations of Braque, Miró, Giacometti and Calder to the works of living artists such as Britain’s Richard Deacon and China’s Yan Pei-Ming. Foundation director Olivier Kaeppelin explains that the focus will be on three kinds of artworks: those that history recognizes as masterpieces, those that present-day tastemakers no longer identify as such, and those that are recent, risky and innovative.

Earlier this year, the Foundation put on a show dedicated to Catalan architect Josep Lluís Sert, who designed its distinctive building. And in November, a separate exhibition will spotlight the interaction between the Foundation and non-visual arts: music, dance and literature. Finally, a number of other institutions are toasting Maeght with mini-tributes of their own (read sidebar, .