Paris spring art surge
Paris’s spring program is stacked — major shows this season include Renoir, Nan Goldin, Lee Miller and Matisse in a '10 not‑to‑miss' roundup published this week (parisselectbook.com). The city also lists free, original activities running March 18–22, including urban sculpture hunts in Hauts‑de‑Seine — great options for public and street‑adjacent art hunts (telerama.fr).
Nan Goldin’s French retrospective, titled This Will Not End Well, runs March 18–June 21, 2026 at the Grand Palais and the Chapelle Saint‑Louis de la Salpêtrière. (grandpalais.fr) The Grand Palais presentation was curated by Fredrik Liew and installed as a series of six major slide‑show works in a village‑like scenography by Hala Wardé, including The Ballad of Sexual Dependency and the 2024 piece Stendhal Syndrome. (grandpalais.fr) Musée d’Orsay’s paired Renoir projects — under the title Renoir and Love: A Joyful Modernity (1865–1885) — run March 17–July 19, 2026 and are co‑organized with the National Gallery (London) and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. (musee-orsay.fr) Grand Palais’s Matisse: 1941–1954 opens March 24, 2026 and runs through July 26, 2026, bringing together more than 300 paintings, drawings, cut‑out gouaches and major international loans from institutions including the Centre Pompidou and MoMA. (grandpalais.fr) The Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris mounts the largest Lee Miller retrospective in France in two decades from April 10–August 2, 2026, displaying roughly 250 vintage and modern prints in a collaboration with Tate Britain and the Art Institute of Chicago. (mam.paris.fr) The Hauts‑de‑Seine “Printemps de la Sculpture” returns for its 8th edition March 21–29, 2026 with more than 100 free events across 22 partner sites, including guided sculpture walks at La Seine Musicale and free weekends at Musée Rodin‑Meudon. (hauts-de-seine.fr)
