I've spent a fair amount of time in Paris over the last 30 years. Both my wife and I really enjoy going to museums, so naturally we've been to the Louvre, the d'Orsay, and the Pompidou numerous times. We've also spent time seeking out lesser-known, smaller options such as the Picasso, l'Orangerie, Montmartre, Rodin, Decoratif, even the Freemasons, and countless galleries that we've wandered into and out of on lazy afternoons.
Imagine our surprise when, on our daily power walk along the Seine, we passed a sign advertising a Keith Haring exhibit at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris, and we had never heard of this place. Could they have meant the Pompidou? Curious about where this museum was, we checked its location on a portable GPS, and we were standing right in front of it! The place looks like a huge courthouse with classical pillars, not a museum of modern art.
We just came back from a wonderful half day there. The impressive and thorough Keith Haring exhibit is fantastic, with what must certainly be his finest-- and largest-- pieces, arranged chronologically and displayed beautifully in an amazing space. And their permanent collection is not too shabby, either, loaded with sculpture, painting, drawing, and some installation pieces by all the usual suspects but with a definite and not surprising emphasis on modern and contemporary French artists like Delaunay, Fautrier, many more, and Raoul Dufy with whom I was not previously familiar but must become so. There is one huge oval room with its expansive walls covered floor-to-ceiling by one piece (done in panels) called Electricity that you have to see to believe. Stunning, in both beauty and scope! There's a lot more than I have the time to describe here, including some fabulous Matisse pieces, but friends, if you find yourself in Paris and would like to spend a few hours away from the Big 3 museums looking at some incredible art, do yourself a favour and find this place on Avenue de President Wilson.
I can't recommend this exceptional venue highly enough. And as a bonus: admission to the permanent collection is free! My wife and I were both amazed by how few people were there on a Saturday, and just don't understand how that can be, with well over a million tourists in Paris for this holiday weekend, not to mention the locals.