Last winter, a surprising group of sculptures appeared in the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris, most of them in the grass plots on either side of the “triumphal way” that runs down the center of the vast pleasure garden, with a few set near the paired pavilions of the Orangerie and the Jeu de Paume. The sculptures were all by what are now known as “historical modernists”: Auguste Rodin, Henri Laurens, Henry Moore, Germaine Richier, Alberto Giacometti, Max Ernst, David Smith, Etienne Martin, and Jean Dubuffet. These new arrivals were not the first twentieth-century sculptures to enter the immense, symmetrical precinct of broad sanded paths, clipped chestnut trees, formal basins of water, and over-scaled stone figures. The Tuileries has been host to a gathering of voluptuous nudes by Aristide Maillol since André Malraux’s reign as minister of culture, almost half a century ago, plus other pieces of more recent vintage. In the past few years, sculpture shows at the Jeu de Paume—an exhibition center since the Musée d’Orsay absorbed its Impressionist holdings—have sometimes overflowed into the garden: most dramatically during the 1996 extravaganza “A Century of British Sculpture,” when, among other delights, an enormous four-part Anthony Caro construction made a stately progress down the triumphal way and a sprightly Barry Flanagan hare frolicked near the entrance. But the sculptures recently placed in the Tuileries are the first unequivocally modernist works to be permanently installed there.

As a group, they form a highly visible— and vital—connection between the museums