Paris: the 9 most beautiful exhibitions to see during the Christmas holidays

Driven by the same interest for the world and reality, but not for realism, Alberto Giacometti and Giorgio Morandi established themselves, each in their own way, as figures of the avant-garde. Although they never met in their time, the Giacometti Institute is initiating a reflection on the proximity between the two artists on the occasion of the exhibition “Giacometti / Morandi. Still moments” presented until March 2, 2025. A poetic and singular dialogue which testifies to the recurrence of models in their respective works but also to their desire to innovate and renew classic forms. The opportunity also to (re)discover the splendid Giacometti Foundation, installed in an Art Deco building in the 14th arrondissement of Paris.

« Tina Barney, Family ties » at the Jeu de Paume

This season and until January 19, 2025, the Palm Game devotes a major retrospective to Tina Barneya figure in American photography. Born in 1945, the artist began capturing those close to her in the 1970s and, from then on, made the intimate and the domestic setting her favorite subjects. Centered around family relationships, Tina Barney’s work accurately depicts generational exchanges in a somewhat theatrical expression. Spanning 40 years of career, the exhibition presents 55 large-scale prints featuring sometimes Tina Barney’s own family, sometimes American personalities, such as Julianne Moore.

“Modigliani / Zadkine. A friendship interrupted” at the Zadkine Museum

If Paris was at the beginning of the 20th century a refuge for all exiled artists, it also saw the birth of a short but fruitful friendship between the sculptor Ossip Zadkine and the painter Amedeo Modigliani, two major avant-garde artists. A relationship that the Zadkine museum explores in an exhibition entitled “Modigliani / Zadkine, A Friendship Interrupted” presented until March 30, 2025. Structured around 90 works, sculptures, drawings and period photographs, the event looks back on the beginnings of the two artists in Montparnasse, their common affinities and their uninterrupted mutual respect.

Until April 20, 2025, the Museum of Decorative Arts celebrates the iconic French manufacture that is Christofle. Through nearly 1000 pieces, the exhibition highlights the excellent know-how of the house since 1830, both in the decorative arts and the tableware. The opportunity also to rediscover collaborations with renowned designers, Gio Ponti and Andrée Putman. Between traditions and renewed uses of silverware, the embodiment of French luxury.

“Rodin / Bourdelle, Corps à Corps” at the Bourdelle Museum

Located near Montparnasse, the Bourdelle Museum hosts until February 2, 2025 a major exhibition which highlights the fraternities between Auguste Rodin and Antoine Bourdelle, who was responsible for cutting the marbles for his elder. Through 160 works, sculptures of course but also drawings, paintings and photographs, the exhibition weaves links between the works of these two masters of modernity: a common taste for fragments and monumental creations, a fascination for marble, a penchant for the aesthetic of the unfinished…

Peter Lindbergh at the Dior Gallery

30, Avenue Montaigne. The address is legendary. This is where the Dior house was born 75 years ago and also where the Dior Gallery is located today, which has become a true museum and memorial temple. Until May 4, 2025, a retrospective is being held here, also conceived as a tribute to the great fashion photographer Peter Lindberghwho died in 2019. Through more than a hundred images captured by the photographer between 1988 and 2018, this exhibition traces the history of the Dior house, its silhouettes as elegant as they are iconic and the very special link woven between the house and the photographer. This exceptional curation is notably composed of previously unpublished prints shown here for the first time, from a shooting carried out by Peter Lindbergh in the streets of New York, in Times Square, in 2018.

Surrealism at the Center Pompidou

Until January 13, 2025, the Pompidou Center celebrates the centenary of the surrealist movement with a major exhibition that is both chronological and thematic. Articulated around the famous Manifesto of surrealism by André Breton, the exhibition combines paintings, drawings, films, photographs and documents which testify to the predominance of the poetic imagination in the movement. This spotlight at the Center Pompidou is also an opportunity to recall the importance of female surrealist artists well beyond their status as muses, and to exhibit their work. While attesting to the global influence of the movement, and focusing on works produced up to 1969 — the official date of the dissolution of the surrealist movement, which was often interrupted, wrongly, in 1940.

If we mostly know Jackson Pollock for its use of drippingthe Picasso museum chose to reveal a more unknown facet of this figure of American expressionism. Until January 19, 2025, the museum is organizing the artist’s first French exhibition since 2008 and presents “Jackson Pollock, the early years, 1934-1947”. The opportunity to unveil a rarely exhibited body of work, which bears witness to the young artist’s research and experiments, both stylistically and materially. Among his sources of inspiration, we note regionalism and Mexican muralists, but also the work of the European avant-gardes, led by Pablo Picasso.

“Arte Povera” at the Bourse de Commerce

In the mid-1960s, a group of Italian artists gave birth to the avant-garde movement Poor Art. Constructed as a critique of consumer society and in a quest for sobriety or even artistic banality, this movement brings together works designed from simple – “poor” – or recycled materials: earth, trees, plates of steel, neon tubes, staged in what we commonly call installations today. An innovative and humanist approach highlighted until January 20, 2025 during a major exhibition at the Bourse de Commerce. 250 works are exhibited, including some of the biggest names in Arte Povera, such as Michelangelo Postoletto.