STEPHANIE HERDRICH: The Paris Salon took place annually in May, and it was a huge event of the social season. It was a great spectacle.

Hundreds of thousands of people attended each year over the run, which usually lasted a month to six weeks. And it was a place not only to see art, but it was a place that people went to see and be seen. It was a great social event. People went to look at the art, but to see who else was looking at the art.

In this room, we’re trying to create a sense of the kinds of works that you could see at the Paris Salon in 1884. So, at the Salon there were thousands of works of art, hundreds and hundreds of paintings exhibited, and they were arranged mostly alphabetically by artist.

You can see paintings that were shown alongside of Madame X in the same room. You can see other formal portraits, other society portraits, genre scenes, all shown to scale, and we hope this will give you an idea of why Madame X stood out, the boldness of the work, and what kind of impression she made, against works by many, many other artists.