A new look at the collections.The city’s proactive policy means that Montpellier finally has the modern museum that donators had hoped for. The museum was recently renovated and extended to 9,200 sq. m, allowing over 800 works to be shown at the same time.In 1779, a few very clever people founded the Fine Arts Society in Montpellier. But only with the donation and legacy of the painter François Xavier Fabre did the institution become a real museum boasting Italian and French works from the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Antoine Valedau, a wealthy stockbroker, would then leave the museum his fine collection of Flemish and Dutch paintings in 1836. Finally, Alfred Bruyas carried on the tradition and donated his vast collection of French paintings from the first half of the nineteenth century. The sculptures are organised around work by Houdon, Pajou and Germaine Richier.