Musée d’Orsay Collection

As part of its French Excellence series, the Monnaie de Paris has released a collection of coins to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the opening of the Musée d’Orsay.

The first coin in the collection, a square 1-kilogram .999-fine gold €5,000 coin, features motifs from some of the iconic artworks housed in the museum. François Pompon’s Ours Blanc and Vincent van Gogh’s Portrait de L’Artiste are in the foreground, with Edouard Manet’s Le Fifre, Claude Monet’s Femme á L’Ombrelle Tournée vers la Gauche, and Edgar Degas’s La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans behind them. The great clock of the Musée d’Orsay frames the characters. The reverse depicts architectural elements from the museum’s interior. It features a flower-adorned coffer, enclosed in a riveted border. 

The collection also includes gold proof 5-ounce (€500), 1-ounce (€200), and 1/4-ounce (€50) coins, as well as silver proof 5-ounce (€50), 1-ounce high-relief (€20), and 1-ounce (€10) coins. All pieces bear the same design, with slight variations. The square €5,000 coin has a mintage of 12, and the gold pieces have mintages of 50, 200, and 500, respectively. The mintages of the silver coins are limited to 2,000 (€50), 3,000 (high-relief €20), and 5,000 (€10). 

All pieces in the collection are available on the Monnaie de Paris’s website.

The Musée d’Orsay

Housed in the former Gare d’Orsay, a railway station built in 1898-1900, the Musée d’Orsay houses the largest collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist artworks. The directorate of the Museum of France proposed turning the building into a museum to bridge the gap between the Louvre and the National Museum of Modern Art. In 1981 Italian architect Gae Aulenti was selected to design the museum’s interior. By July 1986, workers began installing exhibits, and the Musée d’Orsay was officially opened in December that year.

A 2026 recreation of Aulenti’s medal, which was originally made for the museum’s opening, is also available from the mint (mintage 400). It depicts the Musée d’Orsay’s exterior with red accents.