Top 10 of must-see exhibitions in autumn

“The cultural season sounds rich and diverse.” Apparently, the official website of French tourism, Explore France, thinks the same, when you see its list of must-see exhibitions. The same goes for France Info, the public information radio, which lists “not-to-miss exhibitions for this autumn”. And with the end of the Olympic period, the season of exhibitions is now open!

One man, one collection, at the Musée d’Orsay

Exhibitions this autumn are rather focused on one theme, but they all pale in comparison with the major retrospective dedicated by the Musée d’Orsay, the museum of the 19th century and the Impressionists, to Gustave Caillebotte, one of the least famous painters of the Impressionists.

Until 19 January 2025, the museum exhibits his most important paintings, pastels, drawings, but also photos and documents about the artist and its time. The exhibition called “Peindre les hommes” (Painting men) is a compilation of masterpieces from a master of Impressionism who deeply drew inspiration from “male icons” such as workers, sportsmen, the urban man, to “produce a new, authentic form of art”.

Art in exile at the Louvre-Lens museum 

Exils - Regard d’artistes (Exiles - Artist perspective) is the title of three critical questions asked by the Louvre museum in Lens (Pas-de-Calais): “What effect does exile have on creation? What form does creation gives? Does exile make creation different, special? ”. Exile is an experience shared by many artists of the 19th and 20th centuries because of the multiplication of conflicts.

The exhibition is open until 20 January, and is rich with about 200 artworks. It raises the question of bridges between creation and the feeling of exile or true exile. Many are artists who experiences exile, whether true or imagined, for a time or for a lifetime. The pieces exposed (Jacques-Louis David, Gustave Courbet, Marc Chagall or Yan Pei-Ming) were made by artists who “managed to bond the hazards of exile through their creations”.

Another reality at Centre Pompidou

Surréalisme (Surrealism) is the simple and short title of the new exhibition at the Pompidou-Beaubourg open until 13 January 2025. The exhibition offers “an exclusive dive in the exceptional creative buoyancy of the surrealist movement”.

Surrealism was born in 1924 with the publication of André Breton’s founding Manifesto. The exhibition combines paintings, drawings, films, photographs and literary documents. All iconic artists of the movement (Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Dora Maar, and more) are present with the original manuscript of “Manifeste”. The exhibition is both chronological and thematical, and is organised in 14 sections presenting literature figures who inspired the movement.

Step on the ring at Mucem, Marseille

“Clowns, jesters and acrobats” are all at the Mucem of Marseille (4 December) for a major exhibition on the art of the circus, a special exhibition where stage director Macha Makeïeff invites the public to enter an imaginary stage for“a sensitive and whimsical story”.

On the stage of the show-exhibition, “you stroll, dream and confront reality. the poor things of the fairground and the works of great artists combine with fantasy.” From Ballets Russes to an acrobat from Niki de Saint Phalle, pieces from movie makers and major painters (Ingmar Bergman, Robert Bresson, Marc Chagall, Charlie Chaplin or Pablo Picasso) will be accessible.

Gold Ming at the Musée Guimet in Paris

As part of the Franco-Chinese Year of Cultural Tourism that aims at “making Chinese culture in France shine”, an exhibition at the Musée Guimet in Paris, the national museum for Asian arts, stages until 13 January an exhibition especially dedicated to “Gold Ming”.

“Gold has been considered a symbol of wealth and social status” since High Antiquity During the Ming Period (1368-1644), gold craftsmanship achieved “unparalleled luxury and delicacy”. This testimony of the golden era of Chinese civilisation by the Musée Guimet stages one of the most remarkable Chinese collections in the West, with more than 20,000 objects covering seven millennia of art and creation.

Welcoming the other at the Lyon Biennale

The Lyon Biennale, one of the five major international biennales of modern art revamps for its 17th edition starting on 5 January 2025.

Entitled “Les voix des fleuves, Crossing the water”, the latest Lyon Biennale invites artists to “interrogate and investigate the subject of the waxing and waning relationships of human beings with one another and with their environment”. For this project, exhibitions are drawing on the natural and human geography of the region, and on the spirit of the Biennale’s new venues. These venues “are permeated by the question of relationships and of welcoming the other”.

An immersive journey in Gaul at the Atelier des lumières of Paris

Closing the 65 years of Asterix, the iconic Gaul, needed a great finish, and that’s what offers an immersive exhibition at the Atelier des Lumières in Paris, open until 5 January 2025.

This unique creation specially created for the museum, first digital art centre in Paris, offers to join the “indomitable Gauls” on a never-before-seen quest Visitors are invited to look for druid Getafix, captured by Julius Caesar. “From the verdant plains of Gaul to the arid landscapes of Hispania, from the misty lands of Great Britain to the pyramids of Egypt”, Asterix and Obelix will brave deserts and storms to find him thanks to the visitors who will help them in their travels!

A poetic travel with the Little Prince at the Bassin des Lumières of Bordeaux

The Bassin des lumières in Bordeaux offers another immersive exhibition until 31 Decembre. The Little Prince, a fairytale by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the most read French piece worldwide, is put on the stage under an original form, both poetic and magical. 

This immersive exhibition invites the audience to discover or rediscover The Little Prince under a new angle. Saint Exupéry’s watercolours and words come to life on the floors and walls, transporting visitors “to a world where imagination knows no bounds”. Roses, foxes and snakes speak, and visitors travel from desert to meadows, from planet to planet without the slightest difficulty, “as neither time nor space seem to have any power over us”.

At home with zombies at the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac

A completely different travel awaits at the Musée du Quai Branly, with an exhibition open until 16 February 2025 “unveiling the fantasies, beliefs and fears rooted behind the figure of the most famous undead in the world”.

Entitled “Zombies, death is not the end”, this exhibition transports the audience in Haiti on the steps of a true myth. The word “Zombi”, of African origin, refers to a spirit of ghost of a dead, but its meaning “changed a lot in the crossing of the Atlantic during the slave trade, due to a combination of traditional African, Caribbean and catholic beliefs”. An in Haiti, “the figure of the zombi takes shape on the edges of Voodoo culture”. Between knowledge and fiction, the exhibition provides “realities that hide behind the fear of this iconic undead”.

At the heart of the Trojan war at the Musée de la Romanité in Nîmes

Until 5 January 2025, the Musée de la Romanité in Nîmes takes all visitors, children and adults alike, at the heart of the Trojan war saga, on the footsteps of Achilles, the famous hero of the Homer’s Iliad.

Achilles, the legendary hero of the Greek mythology, “who became famous for its bravery and valour in the Trojan war”, is the protagonist of this major exhibition, that presents more than 100 exceptional pieces including a monumental digital fresco that tells the story of the hero in “key episodes of his life, from his birth until the ramparts of Troy, and his escape on Skyros island, and his death from an arrow shot in his heel”.