A municipal exhibition space has finished the work, another is going to get a makeover, a director is leaving. The year 2025 is marked by renewal, offering meetings with big names in photography, an immense artist, the highlighting of science and bones in place.
JR for the reopening of Carré Sainte-Anne
One of the major cultural events of this year 2025 is the reopening of Carré Sainte-Anne next June. The deconsecrated neo-Gothic church, which had been transformed into a contemporary Art exhibition space since 2011, had to close its doors for security reasons in 2017. After long renovation work, Montpellier residents will be able to set foot there again. To inaugurate it, a leading French artist: JR. Much mystery is maintained over this inaugural exhibition which will be on display until the end of the year.
The choice fell on the photographer, renowned for his monumental collages, because he has made himself known in public spaces (recently at the Louvre and the Paris Opera, and soon on the Pont-Neuf) . We can imagine similar packaging on Carré Sainte-Anne. The artist invests more in exterior spaces than interiors. It is expected that he will make a proposal for an evolving and participatory work. To the citizen arts.
Art and science at MO.CO
After a season dedicated to contemporary figurative painting in France, and an exhibition on the links between art and literature, it is now time, for the MO.CO., to explore the relationships between art and science. One of the new identities of the city’s cultural policy. At MO.CO. Panacée (14 rue de l’École de Pharmacie), the choice is made to present two artists working on scientific data: Ivana Bašić and the other Pierre Unal-Brunet. At the contemporary art center (13 rue de la République), under the name “Experiencing the Unknown”, the exhibition highlights around thirty artists sharing “the experimentation of the unknown through the diversion of scientific forms or processes.
-Bones without flesh at the Art Brut museum
She defines herself as a sculptor and DIY specialist. Sabrina Gruss roams the undergrowth and the countryside in search of small or large skeletons, various pieces of bone, knotty wood, strange roots, molts of snakes to make sculptures conducive to resurrection. An artist who definitely has her place in the Art Brut museum. 35 specimens of these strange works which bring life to the inanimate will be exhibited, most of them members of a grimacing people.
Soulages at the Fabre museum
More than a semester. This is the duration of the exhibition at the Fabre museum dedicated to Pierre Soulages, subtitled “The meeting”. It celebrates “twenty years of the exceptional donation of twenty paintings by the artist to the Fabre museum” we are told. A wonderful celebration, because this retrospective will allow us to appreciate around a hundred works on canvas, paper, copper and glass. Even if there are already paintings by the artist from “outrenoir” in the museum, this is about extending the creative spectrum of the Aveyron painter to glimpse the dialogue he was able to maintain “with the ‘history of art and the art of its time’. The other event is that this will be the last exhibition directed by Michel Hilaire, who will leave the management of the Fabre museum in 2025. A goodbye in the light.
Raymond Depardon and color at the Pavillon populaire
The Pavillon Populaire no longer has an artistic director, Gilles Mora left last year. And with that, as Montpellier is definitely the city of construction, the place dedicated to photography will close its doors next February to be renovated. But what he promises for his reopening is reason to rejoice. We find one of the greatest French photographers: Raymond Depardon. In 2022, he revealed his journey through the rural areas of the Mediterranean hinterland using large black and white formats. With the next exhibition Extreme Hotelit’s just for the color. To see, 100 photographs from several series taken between 1978 and 2019. This last year, the photographer left for the United States to carry out work with a camera. Photos never before presented which echo his series on France (2004-2010). We can’t wait.
