Le Best of/de Paris - January 2026 Edition
This selection is drawn from more than 30 exhibitions visited across Paris this month.
List below.
Magdalena Abakanowicz
The Thread of Existence
Musée Bourdelle
20.11.25 → 12.04.26
Fibers, threads and lines — Magdalena Abakanowicz’s new show at Musée Bourdelle in Paris provides an intimate glimpse into a life of work. Compressed into a relatively small space — small only in relation to Abakanowicz’s volumes, of course — the exhibition presents few yet strong pieces that coherently explore the different phases the artist has traversed.
Gerard Richter
Fondation Louis Vuitton
17.10.2025 → 02.03.2026
In Richter’s show at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, I found myself returning again and again to one specific work I discovered: Large Curtain (1967). It is not the loudest work in the exhibition, nor the one most often reproduced, yet it struck me with an unexpected physical intensity.
Meriem Bennani
Sole Crushing
Lafayette Anticipation
22.10.2025 → 08.02.2026
If the premise of the show was to create a work about togetherness, Meriem Bennani absolutely nailed it. The object she chooses is radically democratic: worn by everyone, by choice or necessity, indoors or outdoors, across cultures and classes. Sole Crushing is joyful but not naïve, accessible without being simplistic. It operates on multiple levels at once, and it is difficult to imagine any viewer leaving it unmoved.
I am not going to pretend neutrality here: Berlinde De Bruyckere’s Need quietly restores hope that commercial exhibitions do not necessarily have to compromise visual or intellectual intensity.
Alain Biltereyst
Magenta
Xippas
17.01.2026 → 28.02.2026
Every painting is its own little discovery, like a visual firework—compact, precise, but bursting with ideas. Just when you think you’ve seen everything that can be done within this framework, the next work opens up a new possibility.
Also seen this month:
Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely, Pontus Hulten, Centre Pompidou x Grand Palais
MINIMAL, Bourse de Commerce
Claire Tabouret, Grand Palais
Edward Weston, MEP - Maison Européenne de la Photographie
Jacques-Louis David, Musée du Louvre
Boris Michailov, Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve
Berthe Weill, Musée de l'Orangerie
ECHO DELAY REVERB, Palais de Tokyo
Exposition Générale, Fondation Cartier
Georges de La Tour, Musée Jacquemart-André
George Condo, Musée d'Art Moderne
Martha Jungwirth, Thaddaeus Ropac
Otobong Nkanga, Musée d'Art Moderne
Josef Albers, David Zwirner
Emily Mason, Almine Rech
Lux Miranda, The Pill
Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Hauser & Wirth
Beatrice Bonino, Fondation Ricard
