Musée Cognacq-Jay

The Musée Cognacq-Jay is a museum located in the Hôtel Donon in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris.

The museum's collection was formed between 1900 and 1925 by Théodore-Ernest Cognacq and his wife Marie-Louise Jaÿ, founders of La Samaritaine department store. At his death, Cognacq gave the collection to the City of Paris, which in 1929 inaugurated the Musée Cognacq-Jay at 25 boulevard des Capucines, a building especially conceived for it by the Cognacq couple, who wished to display the collection in the intimacy of a seemingly inhabited home, without the conventions of a museum. In 1990 however, the City, arguing that the Boulevard des Capucines was not part of a "cultural circuit", sought the approval of the legal heirs, and, under silent disagreement of the Cognacq-Jay family, moved the collection to the ill-fitting Hôtel Donon in…