The Picasso Museum to reopen in July

The Picasso Museum on the French Riviera, closed for renovation since February 2006, will reopen next month (tentatively July 20). The museum occupies the historic Château Grimaldi in Antibes, owned by a branch of Monaco’s royal family until the little Côte d’Azur port town became part of France in 1608.

Picasso (pictured above), who was in Antibes with his companion, Françoise Gilot, in the mid-1940s, decorated the château’s walls with “Ulysses and the Mermaids” and completed other paintings there, including “La Joie de Vivre.” In 1966, the Château Grimaldi was officially renamed the Picasso Museum. Subsequent bequests by Picasso family members and collectors have made the museum one of the best places to see Picasso’s work. Info: www.antibes-juanlespins.com /eng/culture/musees/picasso/index.html.