The Making of the Condé Museum at Chateau de Chantilly

Mathieu Deldicque, Director of the Condé Museum in the Château de Chantilly north of Paris, will introduce us to the greatest collector of his age, the Duc d’Aumale, fifth son of King Louis-Philippe and heir to the great fortune of his godfather the Prince de Condé, which the Duc d’Aumale spent collecting precious books, paintings, drawings and decorative art objects, and then building a château in which to house his vast collection. Upon his death in 1897, the Duc d’Aumale bequeathed to the Institut de France both the château and his collections, which include the second largest collection of antique paintings in France after the Louvre, and the 15th century illuminated manuscript “Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry” (sometimes called “the Mona Lisa of manuscripts”). The Musée Condé opened in 1898, and has remained virtually unchanged ever since.

Every Thursday at 12pm Central Time in Chicago/1 pm Eastern Time in Miami/19h Central European Time in Paris – From January 11 through February 22, 2024

Following the success of Grands Châteaux of the Loire and Ile-de-France, The Making of the French Gardens and The Great Churches of Paris series of online talks, our curator extraordinaire, Russell Kelley returns to offer an enthralling new series about an essential pillar of France’s cultural heritage: the extraordinary museums that were established in Paris starting during the Revolution and continuing through the end of the 19th century. We know you will love The Making of the Great Museums of Paris!

Mathieu Deldicque graduated top of his class from the Ecole des Chartes in 2011, receiving the Auguste Molinier prize for his thesis. He was then admitted to the Institut National du Patrimoine, from which he graduated as a museum curator in 2013. During his training, he completed internships at the British Museum, the Louvre Lens, the Chantilly estate and the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2018, he obtained a doctorate in art history from the Université de Picardie Jules-Verne, with a thesis that was awarded the Prix Lambert by the Fondation pour la Sauvegarde de l’Art Français in 2019. In 2013, Mathieu Deldicque was appointed curator at the national museums steering office, within the Museums of France department of the French Ministry of Culture. In July 2015, he was appointed curator and assistant to the director of the Musée Condé at Château de Chantilly, and director of the Musée Condé in 2022.

Russell Kelley is the curator and moderator of the past three winter’s Zoom lecture series on the Grands Châteaux of the Loire and Ile-de-France , The Making of the French Gardens and The Great Churches of Paris. He has lived in Paris for 30 years and is the author of The Making of Paris: The Story of How Paris Evolved from a Fishing Village into the World’s Most Beautiful City (Globe Pequot Press, 2021), and has lived in Paris for 30 years.

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*Through our Entrée Libre initiative, free admission to this series is offered to students enrolled in French Studies in universities and French schools in Chicago and the Midwest. Students MUST register with .edu address