France - visual arts - what's on

Art exhibitions in Paris in 2010

by Tony Cross

Article published on the 2010-01-20 Latest update 2010-01-20 14:04 TU

Personnes by French artist Christian Boltanski for the Monumenta 2010 event at the Grand Palais in Paris
(Photo: Reuters)

Paris's glory days as the centre of the international artistic avant-garde may be over but millions of visitors, both tourists and locals, still flock to its museums and art galleries. Here are some of the exhibitions they will be able to see this year.

Despite a museum strike at the end of the year and a boom in art-related crime, 2009 saw massive attendance at some of the most high-profile art shows in the French capital.

At the Seineside Grand Palais, French impressionist Auguste Renoir attracted 428,000 visitors. But American mobile-maker Alexander Calder and Russian abstract pioneer Wassily Kandinsky, both at the Pompidou Centre, did even better - with 473,000 and 703,000 visitors respectively.

Among the offerings for the first six months of this year are:

13 January to 21 February: French artist Christian Bolanski's Personnes is the first event of Monumenta 2010 at the Grand Palais. His headline-grabbing installation (see photo above) looks at themes of loss and absence.

Evening on the Avenue Karl-Johan
Edvard Munch

19 February to 18 July: Norwegain painter Edvard Munch's Nordic expressionism is represented by 60 works at the privately-run Pinacothèque de Paris.

3 February to 28 June: C'est la vie - vanities from Caravaggio to Hirst at the Musée Maillol looks at the memento mori in the work of mannerists of the post-Renaissance to the bang-up-to-date.

9 February to 6 June: The work of photographer Lisette Model is on show at the Jeu de Paume, which, like the Orangerie, is in the Tuileries gardens.

22 February to 23 May: British landscape painter JMW Turner, also at the Grand Palais, features alongside works by some of the masters who inspired him, including France's own Claude Lorrain.

Lucian Freud's Reflection with two children, self-portrait, 1965
(© Madrid, Museo Thyssen Bornemisza/photo: José Loren/Lucian Freud)

10 March to 27 June: 88-year-old British painter Lucian Freud turns his unflinching eye on people and places, with 50 works on show. This is his first exhibition in France since 1987.

16 March to 27 June: Crime and Punishment, 1791-1981, looks at the theme in works stretching from Goya to Picasso.

30 March to 18 July: In Folk Art of India and Other Masters of India, the non-European art museum Musée du Quai Branly gives its take on south Asia, a theme which also pops up at the Bibliothèque Nationale de la France and the Musée Guimet museum of Asian arts, with Pompidou Centre following with Paris-Delhi-Bombay in 2011.

14 April to 12 July: German fantasy modernist pioneer Paul Klee is on show at the Orangerie.