Recommended exhibitions in Paris museums you don't want to miss

Queen Sirikit of Thailand, in collaboration with historians and local artists, designed eight formats of traditional court dress, thus renewing ceremonial clothing without abandoning the old codes. At the same time, she worked for more than thirty years with the designer Pierre Balmain (1914–1982), and later with the Balmain House and the embroidery house Maison Lesage of Paris.

The result is clothes that are half Thai, half French haute couture, with ikat silk embroidered with gold threads standing alongside Parisian cuts. The exhibition was done with the Queen Sirikit Textile Museum in Bangkok, and is marked as part of the 170th anniversary of diplomatic relations between France and Thailand.

The museum sits in a wing of the Louvre itself, with a separate entrance from Rue Rivoli, and most visitors to Paris don't know it's there. In October, that's an advantage.

“Plumes du paradis” follows one path: a bird that lived in the forests of New Guinea, whose feathers and feathers reached Europe in the 16th century, where they became a sought-after object. The exhibition will feature Papuan headdresses, paintings, fashion details, illustrated books and preserved items, as well as works by contemporary Papuan artists who participated in the preparation of the exhibition.

The part that made the exhibition for me was the European section. In those years, women's hats in Paris and London carried whole feathers, sometimes a whole bird, and this demand almost wiped out some species. The first bird conservation laws also emerged from that industry.

Affinités did not build a separate exhibition hall. It brought objects from the Islamic art collection directly into the art objects halls in the Richelieu wing, organizing them along three axes: light, color, and sculpture. The idea comes from the Arabic word “ajayb,” meaning marvelous things, and shows how much of the technical and aesthetic inventions of the Islamic world trickled down into the decorative arts of Europe.

There is also a museum story here. These two collections were displayed together at the Louvre for more than a century, until the Islamic Art Department was given its own wing in the Visconti Courtyard. The exhibition brings them back to the same space for a few months, and the comparison does the work itself. The regular museum ticket gives you entry at no extra cost.

Andre Friedman, who invented the name Robert Capa to sound like a successful American photographer, is one of the figures who shaped what we expect to see in war photography. The exhibition presents the prints alongside the magazines, books, and documents in which they appeared, rather than just the familiar image. This makes it clear how much of the meaning of a photograph is determined on the printed page and not in the field.

The museum itself is worth the trip to the 14th arrondissement. It sits above the underground headquarters from which the liberation of Paris was conducted in August 1944, twenty meters below the Place D'enfer-Rochereau, and the route descends to the original bunker. The permanent collection is free to enter, and the temporary exhibition is sold separately.

“Knowledge in Deception” (Le savoir en trompe-l’œil) is dedicated to a Korean genre: a painting of a crowded bookcase, intended to show the erudition of the owner. The paintings use a perspective opposite to what we are used to, and the effect takes a moment to get used to and then it is hard to stop looking.

The Guimet Museum is the largest collection of Asian art in France, and was built around the private collection of Émile Guimet, a Lyon industrialist who collected it during his travels in the East. Those who come to the 16th arrondissement for Marmottan or Louis Vuitton can combine them, as all three are within reasonable walking distance. The museum is also showing a second Korean exhibition, “Dal Dari,” at the same time, until February 8, 2027.

The Al Thani Collection has been on display in the wings of the Hôtel de la Marine since 2021, and is a private collection that covers five thousand years of art from around the world. “Animalia” takes one axis from it and juxtaposes gold figurines, jewelry, tools and manuscripts from different periods and continents. In some cases, it is impossible to tell whether the animal in front of you was drawn from nature or invented.

The building itself, by Ange-Jacques Gabriel (1698–1782), is one of the city's most worthwhile visits: the 18th-century rooms have been fully restored, and the balcony looks straight out onto the Place de la Concorde. In the same square, a few meters away, Marie Antoinette was executed.

Marc Bloch (1886–1944) founded the Annales school with Lucien Febvre (1878–1956), which changed the questions historians ask in the 20th century: fewer kings and battles, more everyday life, beliefs and bread prices. He fought in both world wars, joined the French underground, and was shot by the Gestapo on June 16, 1944. In 2026, he was interred in the Pantheon with his wife.

The exhibition is built from archives: family photographs, books marked in his handwriting, a letter he wrote to his daughter Alice in 1943, and documents loaned by the National Archives and descendants. To me, there is a rare fit between the subject of the exhibition and the place where it is displayed, because this is a man who spent his whole life checking whether what he was told was true.

The ticket also opens the hall, the dome, and the Foucault pendulum.

The exhibition brings together some 150 works and documents, from the first self-portrait he painted as a teenager to the experiments that accompanied his latest series. The idea behind it is simple: line, repetition, and graphic invention were the laboratory from which everything else emerged. Those who are only familiar with soup cans will discover here what preceded them.

The Luxembourg Museum was the first French museum to open to the public, in 1750, and sits on the edge of the Luxembourg Gardens and is entirely based on temporary exhibitions. Advance booking is not required but is recommended, and there is an additional €1.50 handling fee on site. There is a nocturne on Mondays and the museum is open until 10pm.

Some 180 works tell how Cézanne was discovered, interpreted, and taken in new directions, from Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) and Henri Matisse (1869–1954) through Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) and Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) to Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) and Peter Doig (born 1959).

The exhibition was produced in conjunction with the Centre Pompidou and the Musée d'Orsay, which is one reason it comes with features that are difficult to obtain separately. This is the big exhibition of the fall in Paris, so booking in advance is not a recommendation but a requirement.

A full ticket costs 19 euros, and an open ticket that allows you to arrive without reserving an hour costs 24 euros. Open from Tuesday to Sunday, and on Fridays until 22:00 PM.

“Eternal Tintoretto” presents paintings and graphic works selected around three lines: the dramatic power of the large scenes, the sense of movement he instilled in each figure, and the sharp light that separates the figures from the background. Alongside the monumental compositions are more intimate drawings, in which it is easy to see how the work was constructed.

The best part about the Jacquemart-André Museum is that it’s not exactly a museum but a house: a private palace on Boulevard Haussmann built by Édouard André and Nélie Jacquemart, where the collection and furniture have remained almost as they were. In the permanent collection you’ll find Rembrandt’s “Pilgrims to Emmaus” and works by Sandro Botticelli.

Gonzalez is usually presented as an affiliate of the Impressionist group, although she never exhibited in their exhibitions. She died at the age of 34, a few weeks after the birth of her son, and her name was swallowed up between Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) and Mary Cassatt (1844–1926).

The Petit Palais has collected nearly a hundred works, paintings, pastels and prints, from museums in Chicago, Dallas, Denver, the National Gallery in London and private collections. This is its first major exhibition since 1885. After Paris, it moves to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

The Petit Palais' permanent collection is open for free, and the temporary exhibition is sold separately. The museum is closed on Mondays.

The exhibition brings together some 40 paintings, mainly from the collections of the Musée d'Orsay and the Musée Marmottan Monet, as well as other private and public collections. The route takes in series from the 1890s, in which Monet repeatedly returned to the same motif at different times of the day: "The Grain Threshing Floors" (Les Meules, 1888–1891), "Poplars on the Banks of the Epte" (Les Peupliers au bord de l'Epte, 1891–1892), "Morning on the Seine" (Matinée sur la Seine, 1896–1897), and "Rouen Cathedral" (La Cathédrale de Rouen, 1892–1898).

All of this leads to “Les Nymphéas,” the series that occupied him until 1926, and here the advantage of the Orangery is absolute: the large decorations are in the same building, in a space specially designed for them. The route concludes with a virtual reality experience called “Monet, au fil de l’eau,” which is not included in the regular ticket. The entrance fee is 12.5 euros, and on the first Sunday of every month, admission is free if you reserve a time slot in advance.

Auguste Bartholdi (1834–1904) was an Alsatian sculptor who worked with Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (1814–1879) and Gustave Eiffel (1832–1923). The exhibition marks the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence.

The statue was assembled in Paris' 17th arrondissement and towered over the neighborhood's rooftops before being dismantled and shipped in pieces across the ocean. This is my favorite part of the story, because it reminds us that America's most recognizable icon was born on a Parisian street.

At the Musée d'Orsay, the regular ticket includes the temporary exhibitions for the day of your visit. The museum is closed on Mondays and open until late on Thursdays.

“Histoires du paysage, de Monet à Hockney” examines what 20th and 21st century painters did with what Monet discovered. The line stretches from 1890 to 2025 and reaches as far as David Hockney, and along the way it becomes clear that landscape served these painters as a laboratory rather than just a subject.

The Musée Marmottan Monet is also home to Impression, Sunrise, the painting from which Impressionism got its name, and the largest public Berthe Morisot collection in the world. A note that I want to emphasize: the museum’s renovation begins in early 2027 and it will be closed for several years. Anyone who has never been there is the window.

“Tiny Lives” (Vies minuscules) deals with anonymous existence, with people whose names have not been preserved by history. The choice to place it in a building whose sole function is to remember great names is the exhibition’s serious joke.

It is spread over the entire nave, and no additional ticket is required beyond the Pantheon entrance ticket. If you also go up to the colonnade under the dome, allow an hour and a half for the entire visit.

Mesopotamia, the land between the Euphrates and the Tigris, is where irrigation was invented, and with it the first canals, dams, bridges, and artificial lakes that we know of. Tablets engraved in Sumerian record the first water dispute in recorded history, and these documents reveal the extent to which the legitimacy of a ruler depended on the harvest.

The exhibition was built entirely from the Louvre's own collections, and it does not sit in a separate hall but is planted within the Oriental Antiquities halls, between the Richelieu and the Silly wings, with its anchor in hall 230. Admission is included in the regular Louvre ticket . Note that the museum is closed on Tuesdays, and on Wednesdays and Fridays it is open until 21:45 PM, which is a good time to be there.

About 80 paintings, pastels, and prints span her entire career. Cassatt came from Philadelphia, settled in Paris, and became a close friend of Edgar Degas (1834–1917), who invited her to exhibit with the group.

It took a hundred years after her death for the national museums of France to dedicate her own exhibition. Anyone who also comes to the Eva Gonzalez exhibition at the Petit Palais will receive two half-answers to the same question about the place of women painters in the 19th century.

The regular d'Orsay ticket includes the temporary exhibitions for the day of your visit. Note that the exhibition opens three weeks after the Bartholdi exhibition, and you can see both in the same visit.

Feducci is a set designer, and his long collaboration with director Patrice Chéreau is one of the most famous chapters in French theater. The exhibition presents paintings, drawings, sculptures and set models, including the models for Alban Berg’s “Lulu” and Christopher Marlowe’s “The Massacre in Paris.”

The interesting part is that Paducci himself chose drawings from the Musée d'Orsay collection to display alongside his own works, including those by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, Hippolyte Le Bas, and Gustave Eiffel. Anyone who has ever stopped by the model of the Opera district on the entrance floor will understand where this comes from.

Zurbarán worked in Seville and Extremadura, painting mainly for monastic orders: huge series of saints, heavy white canvases and almost empty black backgrounds. The exhibition is organized into seven chapters, from monumental compositions to portraits and still lifes, and also features works by his son Juan de Zurbarán (1620–1649). It was built in collaboration with the National Gallery in London and the Art Museum of Chicago.

The final room is all about what comes after. Édouard Manet (1832–1883) and Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) both looked at Zurbrunnen, and the Louvre makes this clear. Note that the exhibition is sold on a separate ticket from the regular admission, and the same ticket also gives admission to “Sculpting the Color,” a Spanish painted wood sculpture from Valladolid that opens on the same day.

“Remember Me” opens the new season at the Stock Exchange to mark the bicentennial of the invention of photography, and spans the entire building. François Pinault’s photography collection is one of the largest in the world, and this is the largest ever to be exhibited.

At the same time, Barbara Kruger’s “History of Tears” opens in the rotunda, built especially for the hall’s 24 display cases, with quotes from George Orwell’s “1984” and Ima Cesar’s “Notebook of a Return to the Homeland.” The same ticket gets you into both. The building itself, which used to be the Paris Grain Exchange, is one of the most successful renovations I’ve seen in the city.

Gustave Fayet (1865–1925) was a winemaker from Languedoc who became one of the most discerning collectors of his time. The exhibition is structured in two parts: the collection, more than 250 works including Van Gogh, Gauguin, Redon, Degas, Cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, Renoir, Morisot, Signac, Bonnard, Villard and Matisse; and the artist, 375 works by Fayet himself, including 49 ceramics and 87 watercolors.

The Louis Vuitton Museum is closed until October 9, 2026 and reopens with this exhibition. It is worth booking in advance and very early, because some of the visiting windows have already closed in the first week of the sale. At the same time, the first solo exhibition in France of Mohammad Alfaraj, who works in the Saudi Arabian hospitality industry, is opening, and the same ticket gets you in.

Viaggel has spent decades collecting “affiches lacerées,” torn posters he peeled from Paris billboards and hung them as they were. The result is an unintentional archive of the city: movie titles, election slogans, obituaries, all torn and stacked on top of each other. The exhibition juxtaposes his work with contemporary urban art, adding archives, photographs, sound recordings, and interviews.

The Carnevale Museum is my favorite museum in Paris, telling the history of the city through more than 625 objects, from Marcel Proust's bedroom to 18th-century shop signs. The permanent collection is free to enter, and the temporary exhibition is sold separately.

“Planète Océan” replaces the previous screening cycle, all parts of which closed between October 10 and 14. The new screening lasts about fifty minutes and uses life-size 3D models of sea creatures, and will be shown every day rather than on a rotating schedule like its predecessors.

Atelier de Lumière is housed in a former metal foundry in the 11th arrondissement, and that's what I think gives it an advantage over other screening rooms: the high ceilings and divided walls create a space that the screening really envelops, instead of a screen projected onto. If you're coming with kids, this is the place that works best in Paris.

“Parallax” was built with the Macabe Museum in Barcelona, ​​and presents Douglas’ work in photography and video. He works with one method for years: he chooses a historical moment, recreates it down to the last detail of the costumes and sets, and films it as if it were a document. The result looks like an archive and is not an archive, which is exactly the point.

The Jeu de Pomme sits in the northwest corner of the Tuileries Gardens , in a building originally built as a parlor and now a center for photography and moving images. The building is currently closed for exhibition installation and will reopen on October 20, so if you're in Paris before then, don't plan a day around it.

“Louvre Photo” does not present photography as art but the Louvre as a subject. It includes architectural photographs from the beginning of photography, documentation of halls that no longer exist in their original form, portraits of museum employees and visitors, and also contemporary works, including those by Robert Polidori.

The exhibition is on display in the Napoleon Mezzanine. For those planning a trip in November, it's worth knowing that the sale hasn't opened yet at the time I wrote these lines, so the link here leads to the official exhibition page. It's worth checking it out at the end of October. If you're at the Louvre anyway, this is an exhibition that changes the way you look at the museum itself.

“Brussels 1900” covers painting, sculpture, decorative arts, posters, jewelry, photography, architecture, and graphic arts. The loan comes from the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, the Royal Museums of Art and History, and the Royal Library, a combination not often seen in Paris.

Brussels in those years was one of the important laboratories of Art Nouveau, mainly through Victor Horta and the houses he built there. The exhibition at the Petit Palais allows you to see the context without traveling, but if it works for you, the train ride from Paris to Brussels takes less than two hours. Note that the Petit Palais's permanent collection is free to enter, and the temporary exhibition is sold separately.

“Girls. Adolescence, mode et rébellion” brings together artwork, clothing, accessories, photographs, film clips, archives and everyday objects. Among the names appearing are Louise Bourgeois, Sofia Coppola, Martin Margiela, Simone Rocha and Jenny Fax.

The Grand Palais is back in operation after a long renovation, and the halls under the glass dome are some of the most impressive spaces in the city, regardless of what's hanging in them. The sale for this exhibition opens on October 6, 2026, so at this point the link leads to the official exhibition page and not the booking page.