One hundred and fifty years ago, an exhibition opened in a small photographer’s studio on Boulevard des Capucine, in Paris. Its artists, an unknown group called the Cooperative and Anonymous Society of Painters, had been rejected by the jury of the annual Académie des Beaux-Arts Salon, held at the Louvre. Who were those artists? Renoir, Monet, Pissarro, Cézanne, Degas, Morisot, and Sisley. The show was by no means a smashing success. Critic Louis Leroy’s review mocked the works, calling Monet’s Impression, Soleil Levant “unfinished.” Nevertheless, April 15, 1874, marks the birth of Impressionism. To celebrate, the Musée d’Orsay brings together 130 masterful Impressionist works and shines new light on the avant-garde movement. —Clara Molot