Built in 1852, under the Second Empire, to house during the winter orange trees decorating the garden of the Tuileries Palace, the current Orangery Museum has undergone several campaigns of work to consolidate the building and transform it. In 1921, he was assigned to the Under-Secretary of State for Fine Arts to exhibit living artists. Georges Clemenceau, then President of the Council, proposes to install there the great ensemble of Water Lilies, a masterpiece that opens new paths announcing the twentieth century and that Claude Monet offered to the State at the end of the First World War to celebrate the armistice and peace. He inaugurated the «Claude Monet Museum» in 1927, a few months after the artist’s death. In 1966, the State’s choice to exhibit the Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume collection, acquired in 1959 and 1963, gave its definitive appearance to the «first modern French art museum» accessible to the public.