Over a century ago, a colony of American impressionist artists settled in Giverny near the house of Claude Monet. Following their footsteps, the Musée d’Art Américain Giverny invites you to discover American art from 1750 to nowadays, with new exhibitions every year.

Designed by French architect Philippe Robert, the building is closely linked to Giverny’s essential features—its light and landscape. He created a space at a crossroad between art and nature, in which the impressionist collection is perfectly integrated into the surrounding landscape. The sober white museum building, set in a natural hollow, extends horizontally and nestles into vegetation that half-conceals it. A large, light entrance hall welcomes visitors, and the three exhibition galleries are spread over several levels following the slope of the hillside. The lowest level houses a small exhibition space and a spacious auditorium equipped for lectures, films and concerts. The architecture is in perfect harmony with its site.

The Musée d’Art Americain Giverny was initiated by Daniel J. Terra (1911-1996). After graduating in chemical engineering, this son of Italian immigrants promoted a quick ink drying process and founded Lawter Chemicals in 1940. The company’s rapid growth and his successful investments soon enabled him to begin collecting art, initially eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British landscapes, and later exclusively American art from the colonial period to the 1950s.

Daniel Terra’s collection is as much the fruit of his passion as his fervent desire to promote American art in the United States and abroad, a task he devoted himself to after 1980, when he was appointed « United States Ambassador-at-Large for Cultural Affairs .» For the future of his collection, he founded in 1978 the Terra Foundation for the Arts (today Terra Foundation for American Art). His first museum in Evanston, Illinois, inaugurated in 1980, was replaced by two museums, the Terra Museum of American Art in Chicago in 1987 (now closed) and the Musée d’Art Américain Giverny in 1992.