The Réunion des Musées Nationaux (Group of National Museums) is currently presenting a revealing retrospective of Claude Monet's work at the Grand Palais in Paris. The show brings together almost 200 paintings loaned from museums all over the world. But the exhibition's curator Guy Cogeval, the director of the Musée d'Orsay, got an unpleasant surprise when Paris's Musée Marmottan refused to loan any of its works by the Impressionist, including a key painting, "Impression Soleil Levant," the piece that lent its name to the movement. The Musée Marmottan, which is a private institution, is planning its own exhibition in December called "Intimate Monet." Despite this quarrel between the little museum and the big institution — and the conspicuous absence of the iconic 1872 painting — Guy Cogeval is thrilled with the retrospective. ARTINFO France sat down recently with Cogeval to talk all things Monet.

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What are your feelings about the situation with the Musée Marmottan?

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I don't understand their refusal to loan Claude Monet's works. You can't look at the museums as equal players in this matter. This exhibition in the Grand Palais is a national effort. After all, the head of the institute is the president of France, who sponsored this great event. The Musée Marmottan said that they specifically couldn't lend out "Impression Soleil Levant" for this exhibition, but this essential piece in Monet's oeuvre actually travels a great deal. In 2010, it was loaned several times, and the painting went to a New York gallery in the summer. But ultimately I find that the absence of this work doesn't at all lessen the Grand Palais retrospective. "Impression Soleil Levant" is one of Monet's ugliest works, even if it had an amazing critical reception at the time and gave its name to Impressionism. In the Grand Palais we have works that are much more beautiful.

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Why have a Claude Monet retrospective today?

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Fifteen years ago, I personally felt that everything had been said about Monet and that people talked about him too much. I lived in North America for eight years and there were many Monet shows — it was almost a craze. Paradoxically, during these years there were very few things being done on Monet's work in France, or if there were, they were in museums in the provinces. Just before my appointment as the head of the Musée d'Orsay, I announced my plan for a Monet exhibition in the Grand Palais. I had even proposed it to the culture minister at the time, Christine Albanel. Then I convinced the director of the Group of National Museums to have it at the Grand Palais. The first reaction of curators at the Musée d'Orsay was to be hesitant, because they felt that there had already been a Monet retrospective recently — when in fact the last one was in 1980! [Former French president] Valéry Giscard d'Estaing launched that exhibition. Two generations have gone by since then, and the retrospective in the Grand Palais doesn't look anything like its little sister of 1980.

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Are you happy with the new retrospective?

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I think that the Monet exhibition in the Grand Palais is one of the best exhibitions that I've seen. It's very well-attended — it seems as if the French have reconciled with Monet. The international press has unanimously loved the show. The installation is by Hubert Le Gall and we've been able to give it an extraordinary delicacy and clarity. Overwhelmingly, visitors walking through this exhibition — including Impressionist specialists and college professors and my fellow curators — feel that they're seeing a Monet they didn't know before.

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Which works were you particularly interested in for this exhibition?

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At the Musée d'Orsay, we are lucky enough to have an absolute masterpiece by Monet, "Femmes au Jardin" ("Women in the Garden"). In the Grand Palais show, it is at its full power, and the retrospective grants it the attention it deserves. Also, the public hadn't seen the landscape series, the landscapes of the Creuse region, for a long time, as all these works are in different U.S. museums. This exhibition consecrates Monet as the greatest Impressionist, whereas 20 years ago it was Renoir.