6-9 years

The museum offers themed tours of the permanent collections and the Galerie des Beaux-Arts for temporary exhibitions. 

The tours are interactive and allow young visitors to discover the museum, the types of works (paintings and sculptures) or a more specific theme depending on their class project. The museum guides lead the tour, adapting it to the pupils’ school level. 

• The tours available 

Discover the museum and its masterpieces (1 hour) 
What is a museum collection? A masterpiece? A museum label? A tour to learn how to look at and understand the museum and its artworks.   

Genres in painting (1 hour) 
Portraiture, landscape, genre scenes or still life? From a selection of works in the museum, pupils will observe and then identify different genres in painting.    

Portraiture (1 hour) 
Whether painted or sculpted, the portrait evokes the life of a character or the technique of an artist. A tour featuring bust, full-length and three-quarter portraits from the collections.  

Landscapes (1 hour) 
This tour immerses pupils in paintings of natural and urban landscapes, whether painted outdoors or in the studio, panoramic or tightly framed scenes. 

Genre scenes (1 hour) 
Genre scenes such as The Wedding Dance by Brueghel, The Ploughing Lesson by Vincent, or Woman Arranging her Hair by Tournès tell us a great deal about a particular era. Take a journey through the collections’ representations of anecdotal or familiar genre scenes.  

Still lifes (1 hour) 
From the hourglass, a reference to the passing of time, to the rose, a token of love, and the book, a symbol of knowledge, this tour explores the many subtleties of still lifes and their reinterpretation by modern painters.  

Sculpture (1 hour) 
Sculptures created from terracotta, plaster, marble or bronze? This tour explores the art of sculpture and the different materials and techniques involved.  

Animal art (1 hour) 
Snakes, lions, oxen... a veritable menagerie can be found in the museum’s collection. A great opportunity to tell a story or observe an artist’s technique.  

Mythology (1 hour) 
Who are Ganymede, Apollo, Diana and Europa? This tour introduces visitors to the great figures of mythology through paintings and sculptures created between the 17th and 20th centuries. 

Music (1 hour) 
Music accompanies visitors as they discover the museum’s works, whether it be a lute in a portrait, bagpipes in a genre scene or a flute in a mythological painting. 

Water (1 hour) 
Through the museum’s collections from the 16th to the 20th centuries, this tour explores the inspiration that water provides to artists, sometimes as a backdrop or subject of the work, sometimes as a colour or material. 

Art through the lens of gender inequality (1 hour) 
What do the works in the museum tell us about the relationship between women and men? How does this iconography shape identities around the masculine and feminine? This tour highlights inequalities within the family, in education and in society, and encourages us to question them.  
This tour is part of the academic programme Bougeons sans Bouger (Let’s move without moving). 

Bordeaux, Port of the Moon (1 hour) 
This tour explores representations of the city and its port, from Pierre Lacour’s classic masterpiece, Vue d’une partie des quais et du port de Bordeaux (1804-1806), to André Lhote’s cubist paintings, Le port de Bordeaux (1923-1925).  
The tour is part of the project Mission Port de la Lune, la commission UNESCO passe à l’action (+ padlet link). 

• Information 

Bookings essential 
Duration: 1 hour 
Prices and booking details can be found on the page Everything teachers need.