French culture in Autumn 2022: must-see exhibitions and events

Most of the time, it is the colours of Autumn that are highlighted, and yes, it’s true, France is not lacking beautiful landscapes, special places and hikes in nature. But France.fr invites you on another type of travel, a travel in the world of arts, in the muffled atmosphere of museums and in the perhaps more invigorating world of immersive and original cultural experiences.

Paris in full artistic bloom

Pay honour to whom honour is due: it is often in the French capital that exhibitions are most numerous and prestigious. “To learn, contemplate, encourage, dream and most of all be surprised by art”: this is the motto of France.fr, for which during this year’s Autumn “Paris is in full artistic bloom, showcasing exceptional retrospectives, tributes and must-see masterpieces!”.

The website designed a programme of visits to discover:

• The new exhibition “Delacroix and colour” at the Eugène-Delacroix national museum “invites visitors to embark on a journey” through the colourful pieces of the “romantic painter [who] described himself as a colourist”;
• A retrospective on Gérard Garouste at the Centre Pompidou: “one of the greatest contemporary French painters”, Gérard Garouste “distorts figures, recomposes art history and the great mythological and religious stories” ;
• the Mirror of the World at the museum in the Luxembourg gardens: the museum “lifts the veil on a hundred works from the art cabinet of the Elector of Saxony”, by presenting an impressive collection of art objects, instruments, scientific books, natural materials, ethnographic objects, dating from the 16^th and 17^th centuries;
• The work of Edvard Munch at the Musée d’Orsay: little known, the work of Munch, the great Norwegian painter, is the subject of a very important exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay, which features around one hundred works, including some forty major paintings;

A cultural bath all over France

France.fr also invites you in another journey to take a “cultural bath” with a selection of the most beautiful exhibitions of the year, all over France, where the great museums welcome works by international artists:

• the Yves Klein, L’infini Bleu exhibition at the Carrières des Lumières in Baux-de-Provence: an “immersive dive into the infinite blue sky of the Mediterranean”, from which Yves Klein, a major 20^th century artist, drew inspiration for his “emblematic monochromes”;
• the Fernand Léger exhibition, “la vie à bras le corps” at the Soulages Museum in Rodez: “getting to grips with life” was the motto of the cubist painter Fernand Léger, whose artistic experience forms a “modern work inspired by Braque and Picasso”;
• the exhibition Champollion, La voie des hiéroglyphes (the way of the hieroglyphs) at the Louvre-Lens: on the occasion of the 200^th anniversary of the deciphering of the hieroglyphs by Champollion, the great French archaeologist, the Louvre-Lens is organising a major exhibition dedicated to "one of the most fascinating writings of the Egyptian civilisation”;
• a tribute to Niki de Saint Phalle at the Abattoirs in Toulouse: the Abattoirs museum in Toulouse, a major centre for modern and contemporary art in the Occitanie region, is paying tribute to Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002) in an exhibition devoted to the 1980s and 1990s.

“Out of the box” culture

The “best cultural experiences” that will surprise you this Autumn in France! This is yet another artistic offer from the France.fr website, which aims to go “outside the box” of culture, by offering a multitude of immersive activities: street art tours, heritage cruises, video mapping, scenic sound and light, open-air exhibitions, historical walks, etc.
Our personal top picks in this list are:

• the Faire le mur tour in Lille in the Hauts-de-France region, where more than 700 works of street art can be seen, along some twenty routes organised during guided tours;
• an unusual walk in Rennes, in Brittany, to the rhythm of slam poetry: the history of Rennes and its emblematic places (Place des Lices, Parlement de Bretagne, Rue du Chapitre) can also be recited with the poetry of slam poetry!
• the lights at their best in Chartres, in the Centre-Val de Loire region: Chartes cathedral, the Fine Arts museum, the Saint-André collegiate church, the bridges and washhouses on the banks of the Eure river are the subject of a “spectacular event unique in the world” with rhythmic and sound-based scenographies, coloured and sparkling compositions that follow the contours and façades of the sites and monuments;
• the passage of time in Besançon, in the Bourgogne Franche-Comté region: as Victor Hugo’s birthplace is also the cradle of French watchmaking, it is possible to take part in “workshops that are as fun as they are instructive” to discover all the workings and secrets of mechanical or quartz watches.

So many ways to spend a pleasant and cultural time in France!

To know more: 

- Major exhibitions in Paris

- Major exhibitions all over France

- Immersive cultural experiences

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