The Musée d'Orsay was inaugurated in 1986 during François Mitterrand's first seven-year term, but it was President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing who decided in October 1977 that this former station should become a national museum devoted to all the arts, from sculpture to painting through the graphic arts of the nineteenth and twentieth century.
Read also: The world odyssey of the Musée d'Orsay
After the day of national mourning in homage to the third president of the Fifth Republic, Louis Giscard d'Estaing, mayor of Chamalières in Auvergne and vice-president of the UDI, considered that to honor the memory of his father it would be "
legitimate
»To rename the establishment Musée Valéry-Giscard-d'Estaing.
“It's legitimate, it was he who prevented the destruction of the Orsay station when he was president.
Then he had the idea of creating a 19th century museum there with the success we know.
I think that would be a way of paying tribute to the action of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.
"
Louis Giscard d'Estaing at France Info
Valérie Pécresse and Rachida Dati, the first, have stepped up to the plate to defend the idea of a “
Giscard-d'Estaing museum
”.
The Beaubourg contemporary art center is named after Georges Pompidou, the Grande Bibliothèque de la BNF is called François-Mitterrand and the Musée des Arts-Premiers has been renamed the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques-Chirac.
Read also: Louis Giscard d'Estaing: "My father was a visionary"
Louis Giscard d'Estaing sees the initiative of the LR mayor of the 7th arrondissement of Paris and the president of the Île-de-France region with a positive view.
“
It's legitimate, it was he who prevented the destruction of the Orsay station when he was president.
Then he had the idea of creating a 19th century museum there with the success we know.
I think that would be a way of paying tribute to the action of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.
"