The 7 most anticipated exhibitions of 2025

“Matisse and Marguerite, The Gaze of a Father” at the Paris Museum of Modern Art

If exhibitions dedicated to Henri Matisse are multiplying, the one organized at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris from April 4 to August 24, 2025 promises to focus on a more intimate part of the life of the Fauvist master: his relationship with his daughter Marguerite , translated in particular in his work. Organized chronologically, the exhibition brings together 110 works — paintings, drawings, engravings, sculptures, ceramics — from international collections, some of which have never been shown. Throughout her life, Marguerite maintained a special relationship with her father, becoming in turn his privileged model, an intermediary with professionals in the art world, then responsible for his catalog raisonné. An exhibition full of promise.

They are a legendary artist couple. From June 6, 2025, Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely are in the spotlight of a major exhibition co-produced by the Center Pompidou and the Grand Palais — which will also host a number of events during the closure of Beaubourg . Presented in a historical manner, the exhibition revolves around the central role played by Pontus Hultén, art historian and first director of the Center Pompidou, in the dissemination of the couple’s works and their acquisitions by the largest institutions. A corpus combining emblematic creations such as Shots et Pineapple by Niki de Saint Phalle and the animated machines of Tinguely, archive films and correspondence between the three friends will highlight the style and unique vision of these two artists who became icons of the 20th century.

Adel Slimane Fecih at the Pradier-Jeauneau gallery

Close collaborator of the newspaper, the photographer Adel Slimane Fecih is endowed with an indomitable singularity. Maestro of chiaroscuro and still lifes, he delights in revealing the beauty and poetry of everyday objects, notably through clever staging. From January 9 and until March 2, 2025, the photographer is exhibiting a body of work at the Pradier-Jeauneau gallery, rue de Verneuil, in Paris, alongside new pieces by designer Axel Chay. A celebration of the intimate, not to be missed.

A century after the great International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts which took place in Paris between April and October 1925, the MAD celebrates the birth of the decorative arts and the stylistic revolution that they initiated, first in France but also in the international. The celebration of this centenary will begin with the reopening of the permanent Art Deco collections of the museum, which holds an important collection by Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann but also pieces in lacquer, precious wood and even shagreen – materials which inspired number of decorators and jewelers. From October 21, 2025, the MAD inaugurates the exhibition paying tribute to the 1925 event and highlights the spread of the art deco style in department stores, through the pavilions of luxury brands or even through major achievements architectural.

A figure of contemporary art, the master of black is at the center of an exhibition which will be held at the Luxembourg Museum from September 16, 2025 to January 11, 2026. If Soulages is celebrated for his use of the ultrablack, we know less about his preferred techniques and materials. In particular painting on paper, which the artist used from 1946 and until the beginning of the 2000s. Thanks to several exceptional loans from the Soulages museum in Rodez, we will discover in particular a set of works with large traces made with walnut husk , appreciated by the artist for its play of transparency and opacity.

“Suzanne Valadon” at the Center Pompidou

Before closing for several years in the summer of 2025, the Center Pompidou is hosting, from January 15, a monographic exhibition dedicated to Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938). First a favorite model of Montmartre artists, Suzanne Valadon then distinguished herself through her own painting talents and her unique style. Attached to reality, the artist in fact goes against the major trends of her time, namely cubism and abstract art, to produce a sensitive work, notably multiplying nudes, both female and male. Bringing together 200 works, paintings and drawings, this exhibition intends to salute the great modernity of Valadon and his pioneering role. It is also an opportunity for the museum to further affirm its commitment to knowledge and recognition of the work of women artists who have long been forgotten or silenced.

“Agnès Varda’s Paris, here, there” at the Carnavalet Museum

Almost six years to the day after the death of Agnès Varda, the Carnavalet museum is organizing a major exhibition dedicated to this figure of the New Wave. For once, it is the primordial place of the courtyard-studio on rue Daguerre – both the artist’s place of life and creation between 1951 and 2019 – which is at the center of this exhibition. A vast panel made up of 130 photographic prints, extracts from films shot in the capital, objects, posters and documents allows us to understand the artist’s view of Paris, of people and particularly women. . On view from April 9 to August 24, 2025.