Terra Collection-in-Residence: Musée de Grenoble

Founded in 1798, the Musée de Grenoble houses an exceptional collection spanning ancient Egyptian artifacts and major works of modern and contemporary art. From 1817 to 1853, Benjamin Rolland, a native of Guadeloupe, served as director and curator of the Musée de Grenoble. Rolland was among the few people of color to curate and lead a major museum. Visitors can admire paintings by major European artists such as Rubens, Delacroix, Monet, and Matisse, as well as an impressive selection of twentieth-century American art. The museum is also known for its dynamic temporary exhibitions, its light-filled modern architecture, and its sculpture garden. Today, the museum focuses on preserving and studying its permanent collection to make it accessible to broad audiences.

The Terra Foundation loan of Good Friends in Chicago by Melvin Edwards (American, 1937–2026) allows the museum to revisit American art from the 1970s to today by focusing on an American artist of African descent who is little known in Europe. The sculpture activates and broadens conversations with works in the permanent collection, including American art from the 1960s and 1970s by Sol LeWitt, Morris Louis, Joan Mitchell, Louise Nevelson, and Frank Stella. Likewise, its emphasis on materiality and abstraction engages with the work of international modernists such as Alexander Calder, Jean Tinguely, César, Robert Guinan, and Hervé Télémaque. Through didactic wall panels, the museum provides context for the sculpture for its broad general audiences. 

Over the next four years, the museum will host public lectures featuring professors and curators familiar with Edwards’s work. In turn, the museum will collaborate with the Université Grenoble Alpes’s art department and explore strategies to reach new audiences across the city and the region. 

One sculpture is on loan for four years (February 2026–February 2030).