six major events not to be missed in 2025

► “Artemisia. Heroine of Art” at the Jacquemart-André Museum (Paris)

Painter pensioned by Cosimo II de Medici, sought after by the kings of Spain, France and England, Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1656) was very famous in her time. The trial, which she won with her father against the painter Agostino Tassi, who raped her when she was 17, also made her a heroine of feminism. Through around forty paintings, including loans from major foreign museums, the exhibition at the Jacquemart-André Museum will explore both his powerful mythological paintings and his portraits imbued with psychology, some of which have recently been rediscovered.

► “Art is in the street” at the Musée d’Orsay (Paris) and the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum (Albi)

Their names are Chéret, Mucha, Steinlen, Grasset, Jal (aka Jane Atché) or Bonnard… Their posters, celebrating stars of the stage, alcoholic drinks or cough syrups, invaded Haussmann’s modern Paris in the second half of the 19th century. The Musée d’Orsay celebrates this art taken to the streets, vector of a new society of consumption and pleasures, but also of anarchist ideas with Jules Grandjouan. The Toulouse-Lautrec Museum in Albi will focus on posters of the country’s children.

► “Flemish festivals and celebrations” at the Palais des beaux-arts (Lille)

This is the exhibition event of the new cultural season in Lille, with the theme of “fiesta”. In partnership with the Louvre and the Royal Museums of Belgium, the Palace of Fine Arts brings together around a hundred works by Brueghel, Jordaens, Rubens and others exploring the vitality of religious or pagan festivals in Flanders from the 16th to the 17th century . From carnival to fairs to Twelfth Day, this rich Nordic tradition – still current – ​​combines joyful sociability with an outlet function.

► “Black Paris” at the Center Pompidou (Paris)

How have many black artists accompanied in Paris, since the 1950s, the fight for civil rights and the independence of African nations, while asserting their mixed culture? It is this entire scene, invisible for too long in the stories of modernity, that the Center Pompidou is honoring through nearly 150 African, Caribbean and African-American creators based or having resided for a time in the capital. A promise of great discoveries accompanied by a retrospective of the films of director Sarah Maldoror, who died in 2020.

► “Raphaël Barontini” at the Palais de Tokyo (Paris)

Last winter, Raphaël Barontini enchanted the Pantheon with his parade, his costumes and his hangings highlighting the forgotten heroes of the fight for the abolition of slavery. The young forty-year-old returns, this time to the Palais de Tokyo, with new collages and performances mixing all kinds of images to tell his counter-stories, linked to his West Indian ancestors, on a phrase by Aimé Césaire: “Somewhere in the night the people are dancing. »

► “Music + Life”, Dennis Morris retrospective, European House of Photography (Paris)

From the Caribbean neighborhoods of East London to the British reggae and punk scenes, Dennis Morris has devoted his life to photography and music. Photographer, but also graphic designer, artistic director and musician, this Briton of Jamaican origin is the author of iconic images of Bob Marley, the Sex Pistols and Marianne Faithfull. Privileged witnesses to the emergence of new cultural identities, his images tell the story of the thirst for transformation of youth in post-colonial England.