Now Playing: Paris and its Plentiful Expositions

Whenever I visit Paris, I tell myself that this time I’m going to go to the Louvre. According to Statistica, it’s the most visited museum in the world. I feel like I should know it. Yet, something about its immensity prevents me from buying a ticket. The Louvre has so many works of art that if you only spent 30 seconds in front of each one, it would take 100 days to get through the place. As a less daunting alternative, I look for smaller galleries and special exhibits on subjects that interest me and there has never been a shortage of phenomenal choices.

Below are some of my favorite exhibits that I visited last month.

The Hatred of the Clans

Perhaps you’ve walked through the impressive cannon-lined courtyards of Les Invalides or visited Napoleon’s tomb beneath the 17th-century structure’s gilded dome. But did you know that this extensive complex, built to serve disabled veterans, is home to several museums? In April, I headed to the Musée des Plans-Reliefs, which holds massive three-dimensional, paper maché maps, used by the French military and dating from the 1600s.

When I arrived, however, I found that my 15 euro ticket included entry to all of the museums in the complex as well as a special exhibit featuring 50 years of religious wars spanning 1559 to 1610. The exposition covers the driving forces behind each of the 8 wars that rocked this tumultuous period in France’s history as well as some of the positive outcomes and protagonists of the era.

Through an abundance of documents, works of art, armaments, and armor, the exhibit conveys the havoc wreaked by feuds between Protestants and Catholics and the threat that the resulting instability posed to the French monarchy. Of particular interest to me were the efforts made by King Henri IV and Catherine de Medici to quell the fighting and establish a society where multiple religious denominations might co-exist.

The Hatred of the Clans runs through July 30, 2023.

Léon Monet

I knew that Vincent van Gogh‘s success was largely due to the financial support and posthumous devotion of his adoring brother, Théo. But until visiting the Musée du Luxembourg, located in a wing of the palace that houses the French Senate, I’d never heard mention of Claude Monet’s older brother. Fortuitously, the museum currently features an exhibit about Léon Monet, a prosperous color chemist who gained considerable wealth as the head of a factory near Rouen that produced synthetic pigments.

Fortunately for Claude, Léon was a devoted and affluent patron who not only supported his younger sibling but also many of his friends, including Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, and Alfred Sisley. In addition to buying many paintings from these young upstarts, Léon also staged exhibits featuring their work and introduced them to other wealthy industrialists who began collecting their radical tableaux. At the time, art critics scorned much of what these artists produced, as did the Académie des Beaux-Arts. The Luxembourg exposition showcases Léon’s impressive collection and documents the close but ultimately fractious relationship between the two brothers.

The relatively small Musée du Luxembourg was established in 1818 by Louis XVIII who wanted to show foreign powers that France was able to produce chef-d’oeuvres. It originally housed the works of living French artists, which were transferred to the Louvre or the country’s provincial museums after the artists’ deaths. Today, the museum presents two noteworthy exhibitions per year. There is no permanent collection. In the future, I’ll be sure to consider their calendar when planning a trip to Paris.

This unprecedented and free exposition on Léon Monet runs through July 16, 2023.

Jardin du Luxembourg

Every trip to Paris should include a visit to the Jardin du Luxembourg. I find it to be one of the city’s most charming parks but another feature that consistently attracts me is the inevitable outdoor photo exhibition mounted on its wrought-iron perimeter. You never know what you’ll find but the photography is sure to be of the finest quality. Currently showing is a series by Christophe Lepetit, called La Beauté cachée de l’industrie.

One way to instill patriotic fervor in a population is by making claims of exceptionalism and downplaying or ignoring the positive contributions of other countries. Another way is by bombarding the population with reminders of the country’s history, culture, and ongoing technological advances. France takes the latter approach, seemingly at every turn. I found this exhibit on high-tech industrial sites—from agriculture to manufacturing—to be brilliant. It not only makes France look like a nation on the cutting edge of mass production but also places a high value on jobs that don’t require a 4-year college degree.

This free exhibit is available 24/7 and runs through July 16, 2023.

Picasso and Faith Ringgold

Among the galleries I visited this spring, the Musée Picasso Paris is probably the most well-known. While it’s much smaller than places like the Musée d’Orsay or the Centre Pompidou, my interest in Picasso had never been strong enough to draw me inside. This year, however, friends I was traveling with wanted to go. So, I joined them and am glad I did.

The museum is currently featuring two exhibits. The first, Célébration Picasso, La Collection prend des couleurs!, commemorates the 50th anniversary of Picasso’s death. It is staged by British designer, Paul Smith. Consequently, you’re getting two exhibits in one as you consider both Picasso’s art and the changing settings and atmosphere that Smith installed in each room. The show also features works of contemporary artists from around the world that have reinterpreted or found inspiration from Picasso’s pieces.

This exhibit runs through August 27, 2023.

I found the second exhibit, Faith Ringgold, Black is Beautiful, to be even more compelling. I have to admit that I’d never heard of this American artist and feminist who has been an outspoken activist in the fight for equal rights for decades. The exhibit features many of her disturbing and uncompromising depictions of African-American life.

One large room houses a series of 12 quilts, called the French Collection, in which Ringgold tells the story of an African-American woman (an alter-ego?) who goes to Paris to study art in the 1920s. The series was inspired by a trip to France that Ringgold took in 1961.

The Ringgold exhibit runs through July 2, 2023.

LOUIS XVI, MARIE-ANTOINETTE AND THE REVOLUTION

Yes, some of the best things in life are indeed free. The French National Archives currently features a free exposition on the troubling fate of the royal family during the French Revolution. The only thing I found less than stellar about this exceptional exhibit was the crowd. On a Sunday afternoon, a space that I assumed few people knew about was absolutely packed.

Perhaps I should have assumed that the story of how Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and their entourage spent their last 1000 days would be of keen interest to many. The show documents their daily lives from shortly before they were forced to leave Versailles, until the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of the first French Republic. A spectacular assortment of paintings, drawings, ledgers, diaries, letters, engravings, even furnishings, render palpable the tensions and false hopes of the royal family’s lengthy confinement.

There was so much to unpack, I was unable to delve as deeply as I wanted in the 3 hours I’d allotted to spend before the place closed. I would happily return but unfortunately, that Sunday was also my last day in Paris.

This exhibit runs through November 6, 2023.

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