Top 10 of the best exhibitions for the winter 2025

In France, exhibitions usually work by season and cycle. Generally, there are three highlights throughout the year: major exhibitions in early September usually lasting four to five months, then exhibitions opening in January until summer, then Spring exhibitions for six months. This year, January and February are especially rich in art events... Just follow the guide!

Winter in Paris

“Louvre Couture: Art and fashion: statement pieces” at the Louvre museum (24 January - 21 July 2025)

The first fashion exhibition of the Louvre museum, the idea is to generate or put the spotlights on the bridges between permanent collections of the museum and creations of grands couturiers. According to Explore France, official website for tourism in France, this is one of the “must-see exhibitions in Paris in 2025”. With “jewels, bronzes, ceramics and tapestries from the Louvre’s Objets d’art department” are included “sixty contemporary silhouettes and fashion accessories are displayed”. A “dialogue between the history of fashion and the history of art, a source of inspiration for great couturiers such as Jacques Doucet to Madame Carven, and an invitation to take a fresh look at the museum’s collections”. 

« Suzanne Valadon » at Centre Pompidou (15 January - 26 May 2025)

Through 200 paintings, the Centre Pompidou pays tribute to post-impressionism, and specifically Suzanne Valadon, “iconic and audacious artist, one of the most important of her generation”, whose work occupies a singular place in the history of art. “Modern and self-taught”, Valadon was first and foremost the muse of artists such as Auguste Renoir and Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, but “she (quickly) found a passion for drawing and a favourite subject: nude scenes, both male and female, highlighting the fragility of bodies tested by everyday life”, says Explore France. 

To be noted that the Centre Pompidou will close in summer for renovation works lasting five years. A last exhibition will be presented at the museum from March to June. “Paris Noir Artistic circulations and anti-colonial resistance, 1950 – 2000” will presence on 2,000 m2 the work of 150 artists of African origin coming from the United States, the Antilles or even Africa, who chose to live in the French capital.

“Picasso, art in motion” at the Atelier des Lumières (14 February - 29 June 2025)

The Atelier des Lumières offers a different way to discover artists and art pieces with a unique and immersive exhibition dedicated to Pablo Picasso in 2025. From Demoiselles d’Avignon to Guernica, “major works by the father of modern art are displayed on the facades of the Paris-based digital art centre”. According to Explore France, it’s a great opportunity to “rediscover the artist’s career, his iconoclastic work and the various techniques, such as etching, paper and glue, folding and ceramics, that revolutionized art in the 20th century”. 

“The history of Department stores” at the Cité de l’architecture & du patrimoine (until 6 April 2025)

From 1850 to now, this multidisciplinary exhibition brings together almost 500 original works from the collections of the French department stores that pioneered the genre “combining architectural, social as well as economic preoccupations”, as the museum website says. This exhibition immerge visitors “in the department stores’ atmosphere through an immersive scenography, which will recreate these consumption temples’ sensory and appealing experience. It will display an international overview of their monumental architectures with never seen before collections”.

“Disco I’m Coming out” at the Philharmonie de Paris (14 February - 17 August 2025)

The exhibition Disco, I’m Coming Out invites visitors, and not only music lovers, to live again “the effervescence of the golden age of disco”. Born in the United States in the early 1970s, disco quickly became a “global trend”. As the Philharmonie website explains, the exhibition pays tribute to “the dazzling power of this music, which is deeply rooted in black history and culture in the United States, and is heir to soul, gospel and funk”. A collection of audiovisual archives, photographs, instruments and costumes, as well as music (with an original soundtrack) underline the political and festive dimension of this music that “brought different minorities and social classes to the dance floor, all united in the same hedonistic spirit”! 

Winter in other French regions

“Oli’s Imaginary Museum” at the Abattoirs in Toulouse (until 4 May 2025)

In Toulouse, this exhibition off the beaten track has already been selling out since early December! With his imaginary museum, famous French rapper from the iconic duo Bigflo et Oli offers a “unique experience where contemporary art, pop culture and intimate stories intertwine in a surprising immersive scenography”, as Beaux-Arts magazine puts it. With “the ambition to break down barriers and appeal to a wide audience, this unprecedented exhibition is a veritable manifesto”. The exhibition features works chosen from the museum’s collections according to the artist’s sensibilities. A must-see!

“Raoul Dufy, the miracle of imagination” at the Musée des Beaux-arts in Nice (until 28 September 2025)

Raoul Dufy (1877-1953) is best known today for “his brightly coloured palette and the cheerfulness of his subjects, which banish any form of doubt or anxiety”, according to the Ministry of Culture, which is presenting this original and exceptional exhibition. The exhibition invites visitors to discover his artistic path “in which the need to conjure up the miracle of the imagination is fully apparent to him”. His singular style unfolds here as he takes us on a journey from the landscapes of Normandy and Provence, to his studio, to the harbours and bathers, to parties and receptions.

“Icons from Ukraine” at the Louvre-Lens Museum (until 2nd June 2025)

The exhibition “Icons from Ukraine” presents four pieces lent during the war as part of a safeguard operation. This unprecedented collection, shown for the first time in France, “bears witness to the richness of 17th-century painting, which combines Western influences with the Byzantine tradition”. As the museum points out, the exhibition also “addresses the role of museums in wartime: to protect, document and educate”.

“Cézanne au Jas de Bouffan” at the Musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence (until 12 October 2025)

As part of the “Cézanne 2025” event organised by several museums in Aix-en-Provence, the Musée Granet is staging “a major international exhibition” dedicated to the painter Paul Cézanne, says Explore France. Cézanne, a local, “considered to be the father of modernism” is highly celebrated in this exhibition. Several loans from major national and international museums invite visitors to discover a selection of paintings and drawings produced by Cézanne between 1860 and 1899 in the bastide of Jas de Bouffan in Aix.

“The Orientalists” at the Bassin des Lumières in Bordeaux (starting on 21 February 2025)

In the 19th century, “the doors of the Orient opened to Western painters attracted by the mysteries of far-off lands”, the website of the museum explains. Prominent French Orientalist painters such as Delacroix, Gérôme, Ingres and other major names of European expression are “dazzled by the light of the far south, which reveals the topography of these arid landscapes and highlights the colours of the buildings’ spectacular motifs”. A pictural and immersive expedition in a “dreamt Orient” offered by the Bassin des Lumières, a pictural travel in the “bewitching world of the Orient”.