ONGOING EXHIBITS
• Through July 22, 2019: Centre Pompidou-Metz in Metz (Grand Est) presents The Adventure of Colour. This exhibit tells the story of color in modern and contemporary art through a selection of flagship works from the Centre Pompidou’s collection. It explores the recurrent urge to experiment with the chromatic spectrum, both as a powerful vector of emotions and sensations, and as an infinitely rich support for reflections on the materiality and spirituality of the medium of painting.
• Through July 28, 2019: Musée de Grenoble in Grenoble (Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes) presents Les mondes inconnus. Explore the universe and its mysteries from aboard different vessels before continuing your adventures around the university campus.
• Through August 25, 2019: L’Espace des Sciences les Champs Libres in Rennes (Brittany) presents Les vies d'une ville. What exactly is our city, the one of yesterday, today and tomorrow? This family-friendly exhibit takes a historical and anthropological look at this question, from the city's foundation around 10BC to the 2000s. It offers a multidisciplinary outlook and includes interactive, audiovisual and mechanical devices to help us better understand the territory's transformations.
• Through September 1, 2019: Musée d'Histoire Naturelle in La Rochelle (Nouvelle-Aquitaine) presents Dinosaurs, Giants of the Vineyards. Are you ready for a journey over the past 140 million years? Hidden under the vineyards are a series of unique paleontological sites, spanning from Oléron Island to Angeac-Charente. Discover the area through its skeletons, landscape reconstitutions, and a 3D movie.
• Through September 29, 2019: The Hôtel de Caumont Art Centre in Aix-en-Provence (Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur) presents Masterpieces from the Guggenheim Foundation. The Hôtel de Caumont Art Centre will be presenting masterpieces from the Justin K. Thannhauser Collection, bequeathed in 1963 to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York. For the first time, around fifty major works from this prestigious collection will be presented in Europe in an itinerant exhibition that began in the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum: paintings and sculptures by the masters of Impressionism and post-Impressionism, as well as the major figures of modern art, from Manet to Picasso, and Degas, Gauguin, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Braque, and Matisse.
UPCOMING EXHIBITS
• From April 27 to December 6, 2019: The city of Lille (Hauts-de-France) presents Eldorado: Lille 3000. The agenda features over 500 events in Lille and more than 80 neighboring towns, including opening festivities, urban metamorphoses, and major exhibits at emblematic venues like the Tripostal and Gare Saint Sauveur. Artists from Mexico and the world are preparing insightful installations and shows in outdoor spaces, balls on public squares, gardens, lights, designs, new technology, fireworks, debates, and more. Learn More.
• From May 2 - September 2: Royal Château of Amboise (Centre-Val de Loire) presents 1519, The Death of Leonardo Da Vinci: The Construction of a Legend. The major exhibition, entitled “The death of Leonardo da Vinci: the construction of a legend”, is devised around the immense painting (280cm × 357cm) “La mort de Léonard de Vinci” (The death of Leonardo da Vinci) by François-Guillaume Ménageot, and a collection of engravings from national collections. It will shed light on how the parameters of the friendship between king François Ier and Leonardo were progressively rewritten by history and how history assimilated them as the myth was created to serve the image of the French monarchy in the 18th century.
As part of the rich celebrations schedule for the 5th centenary, this major exhibition will also serve as a reminder for visitors from the four corners of the world of the eternal place that Leonardo da Vinci occupies in the Loire Valley, and especially in Amboise, where he will rest in peace for eternity in the château’s chapel.
• From May 11 to September 16, 2019: Musée des Beaux-Arts in Angers (Pays de la Loire) presents Alexis Mérodack-Jeaneau. One hundred years after his death, this exhibit shines the spotlight on Alexis Mérodack-Jeaneau (1873-1919), the little-known artist from Angers that was unjustly forgotten after his premature death at 46. He thrived amidst the different avant-garde artistic movements of the early 20th century, frequenting artists including Matisse, Marquet, Rousseau, Toulouse-Lautrec and Kandinsky, whom he helped become famous.
• From May 26 - September 1, 2019: National Domain of Chambord (Centre-Val de Loire) presents Chambord 1519-2019: From Utopian Idea To The Work. The Château of Chambord will be offering visitors an exceptional exhibition including a retrospective of nearly 150 works, manuscripts, drawings, tables, models and objects of art (including three of the original pages from the Codex Atlanticus by Leonardo da Vinci) to retrace the history of Chambord. Also presented will be 18 projects from architecture studios at the world’s top universities to relaunch, 500 years later on, the architectural utopia of Chambord.
• From June 7 - September 8, 2019: Château of Clos-Lucé (Centre-Val de Loire) presents Tapestry of The Last Supper for Francis I by Leonardo Da Vinci: A Masterpiece in Silk and Silver. To mark the anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death at the Château du Clos Lucé on 2 May 1519, the tapestry of the Last Supper, a reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting, will be presented for the first time outside of Vatican Museums and Italy. The tapestry was woven for Louise of Savoy and her son, the future King of France, Francis I, some time before 1514. In 1533, Francis I presented it as a gift to Pope Clement VII to celebrate the marriage between his son Henri II and the Pope’s niece, Catherine de Medici.
• From June 10 to October 27, 2019: Caen Memorial in Caen (Normandy) presents Enduring Ideals: Rockwell, Roosevelt & the Four Freedoms. This museum for peace will host the traveling exhibition of 70 iconic Norman Rockwell paintings, including the emblematic Four Freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.
• From June 22, 2019 to January 27, 2020: Centre Pompidou-Metz in Metz (Grand Est) presents Opéra et arts visuels aux XXe et XXIe siècles. For the first time on such a scale, the “Opera World" exhibit offers an in-depth examination of the history of opera in the last two centuries from the angle of its relationship with the visual arts. Exploring these often fruitful and sometimes impassioned dialogues, the project shows how artists influenced the course of opera history through scenographic creations as spectacular as they are varied. Revealing a lesser known aspect of these interactions, it will also shed light on opera’s impact on the creations of visual artists: the sensorial, aesthetic and sometimes political power that this total art inspires in numerous contemporary artists.
• June 2019: ZAT 2019 in Montpellier (Occitanie) presents 100 Artists in the City. In anticipation of the opening of MoCo (Musée des Collections) at the end of June 2019, Montpellier Contemporary is organizing “100 Artists in the City”, a major exhibit taking place in the city's exhibition spaces, shops, cafes, walls, public places, and more. To emphasize the contemporary axis being developed, La Panacée is also organizing an artistic trail between the train station and Montpellier’s Ecole des Beaux-Art. The neighboring coastal towns of Sète and Palavas will also be involved in the event.
• From July 2019 to December 2019: Centre-Val de Loire presents 500 ans de RenaissanceS. Throughout 2019, the Loire Valley region will celebrate the artistic, scientific, and intellectual effervescence of the Renaissance in France. A cultural program is currently in development, composed of different highlights including a large traveling digital show mixing contemporary artistic and musical creation, an international architecture competition, guided tours, banquets, many exhibitions, international symposiums, and more.