The Top of the most beautiful exhibitions to see in Paris
Parisian exhibitions not to be missed. Fifteen current events, from major retrospectives to rediscoveries, updated with each new installation.
CEZANNE AND US AT THE GRAND PALAIS In Père Tanguy's shop in Montmartre, a few canvases lay dormant in the late 1880s. Their creator had retired to Aix and no longer sought to exhibit. Gauguin stopped there, Matisse would later stop there, and both recognized in this radicalism the path they had been searching for. The Grand Palais recognizes what painting still owes to a man who had given up trying to convince.
ANDY WARHOL AT THE MUSÉE DU LUXEMBOURG His first self-portrait dates from 1942, when he was fourteen. His last drawing is an acrylic preparatory sketch for The Last Supper. Between the two, an image-making machine, and a draftsman whom the screen prints have ultimately obscured. The Musée du Luxembourg traces the hand back to the printed color.
KERRY JAMES MARSHALL, THE HISTORIES, AT THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
Raised in Watts, a witness to the 1965 riots, Kerry James Marshall paints Black bodies in formats and subjects that the history of painting had denied them: genre scenes, formal portraits, inhabited landscapes. Black is a solid color, never a shadow. The Museum of Modern Art is dedicating its first major French retrospective to him.
MUSEUM OF MODERN ART IN PARIS
From September 18, 2026 to January 24, 2027
THE ETERNAL TINTORETTO AT THE JACQUEMART-ANDRÉ MUSEUM
"The most terrible mind that painting has ever known," wrote Vasari in 1568. Tintoretto's entire life was spent in Venice, where he was born, worked, and died, hardly ever leaving. Turbulent skies, vertiginous foreshortening, bodies thrown diagonally: Jacquemart-André brings together the first French retrospective dedicated to him on Boulevard Haussmann.
JACQUEMART-ANDRÉ MUSEUM
From September 11, 2026 to January 24, 2027
SOFIA COPPOLA'S MARIE ANTOINETTE AT THE PETIT TRIANON Satin shoes, stacks of macarons, a young woman bored behind windows that are too high. Sofia Coppola filmed these images at Versailles in 2005, and the palace is returning them to her in an exhibition she curated with him. Costumes and sets are back at the Petit Trianon, the very place the queen had furnished for herself to escape the court.
EVA GONZALÈS AT THE PETIT PALAIS She was Manet's only student, and that's about all that's been remembered about her. The Petit Palais is giving her her first major retrospective, nearly 140 years after her death. Paintings, drawings, prints, and archival materials follow a student who never imitated her master and maintained her own style, even in subjects she was advised against.
AUGUSTE BARTHOLDI AT THE MUSÉE D'ORSAY It took an obsessive Alsatian, an iron engineer, and three hundred copper plates hammered by hand on rue de Chazelles to bring Lady Liberty into the world's imagination. The Musée d'Orsay is dedicating a season to Bartholdi to mark the 140th anniversary of the New York inauguration, and reminds us that the American icon was first a Parisian project.
ARTISTS AT THE MUSEUM, GRAND GALLERY OF EVOLUTION The Menagerie at the Jardin des Plantes opened in 1794, and young artists came to draw animals they had seen nowhere else. Some will be named Rodin, Matisse, or Marie Laurencin. The Great Gallery of Evolution traces this lineage and presents the museum as a workshop, from a time when the paintbrush did the work that the microscope had not yet undertaken.
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
From September 23, 2026 to March 7, 2027
PRIMORDIAL WATER, LESSONS FROM MESOPOTAMIA, AT THE LOUVRE Before becoming a political issue, water was a divine matter. Between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, humanity learned to tame the sea, irrigate it, share it, and fight for it. The Louvre brings together around a hundred Mesopotamian works focusing on this invention, which also marks the beginnings of the first cities and the first conflicts over a resource.
TROMPE-L'ŒIL IN KOREA AT THE GUIMET MUSEUM Books piled to the ceiling, scrolls, brushes, a vase, a pair of glasses: on these Korean screens, everything is painted and nothing exists. The chaekgeori, a trompe-l'œil library originating in the Joseon court, revealed the knowledge one possessed and, above all, the knowledge one wished one possessed. Guimet showcases two centuries of art, previously unknown in France.
AZZEDINE ALAÏA AND AFRICA
Dresses embroidered with seashells, white cottons like the limewash of Maghreb houses, openwork silhouettes that let the light through like mashrabiya screens. The Azzedine Alaïa Foundation follows what the couturier took from Africa, not as a decorative motif but as a working material, a way of cutting and letting things breathe.
AZZEDINE ALAÏA FOUNDATION
Until January 4, 2027
MINUSCLE LIVES AT THE PANTHEON
The Pantheon is for great men. The Centre Pompidou and the Centre des Monuments Nationaux are installing the opposite: lives without glory, those that Pierre Michon rescued from oblivion in his 1984 book. Under the dome, the anonymous individual receives the space, the scale, and the lighting that the monument reserved for statues.
PANTHEON
From September 25, 2026 to January 31, 2021 2027
LANDSCAPE STORIES AT THE MARMOTTAN MONET MUSEUM
One hundred years after Monet's death, his museum could have focused solely on the Water Lilies. Instead, it chose to trace the landscape over more than a century, from 1893 to Hockney. What emerges is not a story of styles but a story of History: wars, industry, and climate are reflected in trees and skies before being captured in books.
MARMOTTAN MONET MUSEUM
From September 24, 2026 to January 31, 2027
LADY LIBERTÉ AT THE MUSEUM OF ARTS AND CRAFTS
Three hundred copper plates, a workshop on Rue de Chazelles, and a colossal sculpture that had to be assembled in Paris and then disassembled for shipping. The Museum of Arts and Crafts tackled the problem through engineering: tools, templates, load calculations, and an immersive scenography with headphones. This is the second part of the diptych that the museum forms with the Musée d'Orsay around Bartholdi.
MUSÉE DES ARTS ET MÉTIERS
From September 22, 2026 to August 1, 2027
HASSAN HAJJAJ, MY ROCK STARS, AT THE MUSÉE DE LA MUSIQUE Tin can bottoms, Nike slippers, pop glasses, harsh light from Marrakech or London: Hassan Hajjaj photographs his rock stars as if setting up a makeshift studio, and the whole thing works. Rachid Taha nicknamed him Andy Wahloo. The Musée de la Musique (Museum of Music) is exhibiting his work and accompanying it with music, including Acid Arab.
MUSÉE DE LA MUSIQUE - PHILHARMONIE DE PARIS
From September 22, 2026 to April 25, 2027
