The best new exhibitions in Paris
The Louvre looks back on photography, the Conciergerie suspends waves beneath its Gothic vaults before a long renovation campaign, and the BnF (National Library of France) brings back sixty years of Mimi Cracra. Twenty-three Parisian exhibitions have opened in less than five weeks, from the Cartier Foundation to the Jeu de Paume and from the Musée d’Orsay to Lafayette Anticipations.
LOUVRE PHOTOGRAPHY AT THE LOUVRE MUSEUM The world's largest museum looks back on the invention that changed the way it is viewed. Dominique de Font-Réaulx and Quentin Bajac unfold the story of photography on the Napoleon Mezzanine, a photography that first served the Louvre, documenting it, before entering the museum as a work of art in its own right. Exhibition design by Juan Felipe Alarcón.
LOUVRE MUSEUM
From November 4, 2026 to May 3, 2027
AGNÈS ROSENSTIEHL AT THE BNF Mimi Cracra taught generations of children that it was okay to get dirty without getting in trouble. The BnF's Donors' Gallery showcases sixty years of pioneering books by Agnès Rosenstiehl, who drew little girls free to move about long before it became a publishing trend. Free admission.
BNF, FRANÇOIS-MITTERRAND SITE
From November 3, 2026 to January 25, 2027
THE BIRTH OF WAVES AT THE CONCIERGERIE The Hall of the Men-at-Arms is the largest Gothic civil hall in Europe, and it will close for a long period of renovations. Émilie Faïf and Nicolas André are suspending a final installation before the scaffolding goes up: waves beneath the fourteenth-century vaults, in a place that has never seen the sea.
IBRAHIM MAHAMA AT THE CARTIER FOUNDATION
A glass bottle factory opened in Ghana in 1966, purchased abandoned, dismantled, and then reassembled in the spaces of the Palais-Royal. Ibrahim Mahama occupies the entire Cartier Foundation and also installs his parliament of stools there, with several guest artists. Rarely has a Parisian museum so closely resembled a deliberate construction site.
CARTIER FOUNDATION FOR CONTEMPORARY ART
From October 22, 2026 to February 28, 2027
PAUL KODJO, PHOTOROMANCE, AT THE PALAIS DE TOKYO
Photography has spent two centuries swearing that it tells the truth. Paul Kodjo used it to create fictions: photo novels shot in the streets of Abidjan and published from 1971 onwards in the weekly newspaper Ivoire Dimanche. The Palais de Tokyo is dedicating its first major solo exhibition in France to her, and the discovery is belated.
PALAIS DE TOKYO
From October 21, 2026 to February 14, 2027
JENNY HOLZER, “I SAW,” AT THE MUSÉE D’ORSAY
Light strips display phrases in French above the marble sculptures and large-format nineteenth-century works. In front of The Romans of the Decadence, a red marble bench bears an engraved inscription; beneath the glass roof, a wall of gilded and censored paintings captures the viewer's attention. The American artist gives voice to the secrets of power.
MUSÉE D’ORSAY
From October 20, 2026 to February 21, 2027
PRUNE NOURRY, VISIONARIES, AT THE PETIT PALAIS
Healers, oracles, maternal figures: Prune Nourry summons a procession of women who know to the Petit Palais. Raw clay, bronze, woven bamboo—her sculptures borrow from rituals as much as from medical imagery, and place the ailing body at the center of the narrative. The exhibition has the gravity of a ceremony, and admission is free.
PETIT PALAIS
From October 20, 2026 to January 24, 2027
STAN DOUGLAS, PARALLAX, AT THE JEU DE PAUME
Stan Douglas reconstructs moments in history with the meticulousness of a director, then shifts the point of view until certainty wavers. Monumental photographs, films, and installations compose a patient investigation into the making of news images. The Jeu de Paume is dedicating its first major Parisian retrospective to him.
JEU DE PAUME
From October 20, 2026 to January 10, 2027
SUSAN MEISELAS AND MARTINE FRANCK AT THE HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON FOUNDATION
Two women's perspectives on the century, brought together for the first time. Susan Meiselas documents the uprisings in Central America, Martine Franck the unwavering gentleness of anonymous individuals and studios. The Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation brings their archives into dialogue and reveals two ways of engaging with photojournalism without silencing the other's voice.
HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON FOUNDATION
From October 21, 2026 to March 7, 2027
WALID RAAD AT CENTQUATRE-PARIS CENTQUATRE entrusts its Stables to the Lebanese-American visual artist, who brings together photographs, collages, sculptures, and videos around what archives keep silent. A world first: Walid Raad himself leads more than thirty free tours of his exhibition, and the narrative becomes part of the artwork.
LE CENTQUATRE-PARIS
From October 23 to November 22, 2026
THE CALL OF THE DEEP AT THE NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM
Eight hundred square meters and nearly two hundred and eighty pieces, for a season presented for the first time across the museum's five sites. Shipwrecks, the deep sea, abyssal creatures, and oceanographic expeditions: the Palais de Chaillot tells the story of what we know about the sea beneath the surface, and especially what we still don't know.
NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM
From October 14, 2026 to April 4, 2027
GUSTAVE FAYET AT THE LOUIS VUITTON FOUNDATION An industrialist from the Aude region and a painter himself, Gustave Fayet bought Gauguin and Redon when no one else wanted them, and transformed an abbey into a complete studio. The Louis Vuitton Foundation brings together what his eye had discerned, and the exhibition is as valuable for the paintings as it is for the portrait of a collector who created through collecting.
MONET, PAINTING TIME, AT THE MUSÉE DE L'ORANGERIE
Here, Monet is at home: the two oval rooms have housed the Large Decorations since 1927. For the centenary of his death, the Orangerie revisits the obsession that fueled all his painting: time. Forty canvases, from series to snapshots, where the same haystack and the same cathedral change from hour to hour, from mist to full sunlight.
MUSÉE DE L'ORANGERIE
From September 30, 2026 to January 25, 2027
MARY CASSATT, THE INDEPENDENT, AT THE MUSÉE D'ORSAY
An American in Paris, Mary Cassatt exhibited with the Impressionists, yet rejected their landscapes: she painted dressing rooms, children bathing, women reading, and busy hands. The Musée d'Orsay is offering her a retrospective that finally corrects her image as a painter of motherhood and reveals a formidable technician.
MUSÉE D'ORSAY
From October 6, 2026 to January 31, 2027
REMEMBER ME AT THE BOURSE DE COMMERCE The Pinault Collection entrusts its walls to photography and chooses portraiture as its central theme, from the rediscovered anonymous individual to the overexposed star. Faces line up, size each other up, and ultimately compose a gallery of ghosts. Beneath the rotunda, the installation is understated, allowing each viewer to occupy all the space they desire.
BOURSE DE COMMERCE - PINAULT COLLECTION
From October 7, 2026 to January 18, 2027
KURT SCHWITTERS, THE CHAOS-WORLD, AT THE PICASSO MUSEUM
Tram tickets, packaging, bits of string: Schwitters spent thirty years piecing the world back together with its waste and named the company Merz. The Picasso Museum traces this trajectory from Weimar Germany to his English exile, and the predicted chaos reveals itself with a geometric precision, almost tenderness.
PICASSO NATIONAL MUSEUM-PARIS
From October 6, 2026 to February 7, 2027
JACQUES VILLEGLÉ, PARIS TORN FREE, AT THE CARNAVALET MUSEUM
Carnavalet celebrates the centenary of Jacques Villeglé, the man who stripped the walls of Paris to create works of art. Torn posters, shredded slogans, advertisements ripped by hands other than her own: half a century of Parisian street life torn away in sections, then hung on the museum wall.
CARNAVALET MUSEUM
From October 14, 2026 to February 14, 2027
LOUISE BOURGEOIS, EXTREME TENSION, AT THE BNF RICHELIEU Everyone saw the spider, almost no one saw the drawings. The BnF (National Library of France) is bringing out of storage the 1995 donation, augmented by ninety-one works from the Centre Pompidou: lines that tangle like nerves, houses that become bodies. This is the artist's first exhibition in a Parisian public institution since 2008.
BNF, RICHELIEU SITE
From October 20, 2026 to February 21, 2027
LUBAINA HIMID AT THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART IN PARIS A single piece, placed amidst the permanent collections, and everything changes. The British artist takes a Black servant relegated to the background of a William Hogarth painting and brings him to the forefront. Free admission, as part of the Festival d’Automne: the shortest and most compelling visit of the Parisian season.
MUSEUM OF MODERN ART OF PARIS
From October 16, 2026 to January 10, 2027
RICHARD WAGNER AT THE OPERA LIBRARY-MUSEUM
Behind the façade of the Palais Garnier lies a library-museum whose existence is unknown to most Parisians. The Paris Opera and the National Library of France (BnF) are jointly presenting a century and a half of productions of The Ring of the Nibelung, with models and costumes to support their presentation, while the Bastille Opera is staging a new production.
PALAIS GARNIER, OPERA LIBRARY-MUSEUM
From October 27, 2026 to February 20, 2027
A HISTORY OF FRENCH CINEMA, MAGHREBI LEGACIES, AT THE PALAIS DE LA PORTE DORÉE
The National Museum of the History of Immigration tells the story of French cinema from the perspective of those who made it: three generations of directors and actors from Maghrebi immigrant backgrounds, from Ali Ghalem and Mehdi Charef to Rachid Bouchareb, Hafsia Herzi or Roschdy Zem. A whole chapter of French cultural history finally told, with a free opening weekend.
PALAIS DE LA PORTE DORÉE
From October 30, 2026 to March 21, 2027
ALL THE LIGHTS, THE FLOWERS, AT THE PALAIS DE TOKYO
An entire season rather than just an exhibition: the Palais de Tokyo brings together the connections that bind us to places, memories, and others. Intimate legacies, collective commitments, and evolving imaginations create sensitive landscapes, to be explored in any order. Until February.
PALAIS DE TOKYO
From October 21, 2026 to February 14, 2027
YU NISHIMURA AT LAFAYETTE: ANTICIPATIONS
The first institutional monograph in France for the Japanese painter Yu Nishimura, featuring some fifty works from the last ten years, including several previously unseen pieces. The oil remains suspended there, on the edge of blur, like an image whose focus has never quite been set. Rue du Plâtre.
LAFAYETTE ANTICIPATIONS
From October 21, 2026 to January 3, 2027
