WASHINGTON (AFP) ― The 14 rooms of the National Gallery of Art in Washington dedicated to French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism are due to reopen Saturday after a two-year renovation.

The paintings from artists like Corot, Picasso, Monet, Cezanne and Renoir are displayed in a new thematic arrangement designed to make them have a “conversation” with each other, Mary Morton, director of the museum’s department of French paintings, told AFP. Previously, the paintings were arranged chronologically.

“If you put Degas, Renoir, Monet and Mary Cassatt together, you can see that there is a real coherence from a point of view of colors, of composition, of lines but also in terms of motifs,” Morton said. “They have quite a bit to say to one another.”

One room focuses on landscapes while another displays paintings with scenes of Paris.

The roughly 150 paintings in the collection were made between the 1840s and the early 19th century.

The museum ― located on the National Capital Mall in the center of the U.S. capital ― has a collection that includes paintings such as “Boy in a Red Waistcoat” by Cezanne, “The Railway” by Manet, “Self-Portrait” by Van Gogh, “Rouen Cathedral” by Monet and “Family of Acrobats with Monkey” by Picasso.

The French wing of the museum, which receives some 4 million visitors a year, is “the most popular part of the museum,” says Morton.

“It’s very difficult not to have it opened for two years,” she said.

“People come and generally they ask for Monet, they ask for Impressionism.”

A symposium on French Impressionist paintings is scheduled for April 27 and April 28 in Washington with representatives of the Musee d’Orsay in Paris and major American museums that hold 19th century French paintings.

“Americans have especially loved this school of painting even before the French were able to embrace it, which is one of the reasons that so much of the good material is in the U.S.,” Morton said.