Paris’s Reopened Picasso Museum Puts the Artist’s Work, Not His Biography, at Center Stage — vogue.com

“You are what you keep,” Pablo Picasso once said. The artistic behemoth of the 20th century filled his studios to the point of bursting with all manner of objects, from ex-votos and postcards to African masks and musical instruments, alongside paintings by friends like Modigliani or Matisse, and his own creations, which he jealously guarded. When he died in 1973, at age 92, he left behind an astonishing 70,000 works, not including art by others that he owned, and a vast archive of photographs, movie tickets, and assorted ephemera. Five thousand carefully chosen works—an unparalleled selection across the length and breadth of Picasso’s career—were donated by his heirs to the French state, in lieu of paying an inheritance tax, to create the Picasso Museum in Paris, the Spaniard’s longtime adopted home. It opened in 1985 in the Hôtel Salé, an exquisite, seventeenth-century hôtel particulier in the Marais district. Five years ago, it closed for a renovation that dragged on amid controversy and staff firings. When it reopened on Saturday (on Picasso’s birthday, October 25), visitors got a glimpse of all they had missed.

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