“Chère Melpomène,
We call to you, the ancient muse of tragedy, who once reigned at the back of the Palais des Beaux-Arts. Once a towering statue, several meters high, you have now become a ruin. From the residue of your dust, we seel to transcend the archetype of the muse and evoke a fresh, nuanced breath, able to seep into the interstices of established orders. In between inspiration and expiration, between what is spoken and what remains silent, this breath embodies our deepest desire for social justice.”

Chère Melpomène is a call to subvert classical myths in order to convey other stories that are closer to our daily lives. The exhibition invites us to listen, feel, and breathe together in a poetic exploration of what binds us.
Drawing inspiration from the methodology of artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951–1982) in her work Dictée (1982) - where the nine muses of Greco-Roman antiquity are reimagined to honor female martyrs who sought emancipation - the exhibition sublimates reality by rerouting the figure of Melpomène. What relationships should we cultivate among the inhabitants of the earth - beyond species, and between animate and inanimate beings? Theresa Hak Kyung Cha invites us to prioritize our senses, intuition, and pay attention to our surroundings in order to reconnect with the multiple breaths of life and reignite our commoning energy.

The exhibition invites us to navigate our intimate tragedies and the stories we can tell about them. It offers an incantation to summon spiritual and political alliances, to infuse our struggles with magic, expand our imagination, and nurture hope. The pieces in this exhibition embody acts of resistance and solidarity, sharing speculative cosmogonies that translate the plurality of memories that shape our contemporary society and cultivate our interdependence while honoring our individual differences.

Chère Melpomène intertwines a hundred works from the collections, students and international artists, presenting a transhistorical display from the late 17th century to today. Most have never been exhibited—recently acquired by the School or newly created for the exhibition—while others have yet to circulate in institutional spaces.

Download the exhibition brochure (FR)

They talk about it...

« Chère Melpomène : our photos from Beaux-Arts de Paris exhibition » - sortiraparis.com

« A selection of exhibitions that caught our eye » - L’œil

« Best of the Month - Beaux-Arts de Paris: “La muse d'aujourd'hui” (The muse of today) » - Technikart

« Beaux-Arts de Paris muse reinvented » - The Art Newspaper

Nocturnes program on Wednesday evenings

WEDNESDAY MAY 21 2025

2pm | Atelier Matières en errances / matières en questions
On registration

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WEDNESDAY MAY 28 2025

2 to 4pm | Atelier d'écriture

6.30pm | Table ronde Muser, Magiser

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Curators

Mélanie Bouteloup and Armelle Pradalier, co-directors of the “Artists & Exhibition Professions” program, Giulia Longo, Curator of Prints and Photographs at Beaux-Arts de Paris, with students in the program : Kenza Agbo, Adèle Anstett, Martin Bas, Héloïse Bayard, Léonard Berthou, Pauline Boudaoud, Mathilde Cassan, Mathilde Chabaud, Elisa Leïla Durand, Éloïse Frye De Lassalle, Klara Jakes, Clément Justin Hannin, Zoé Le Bacquer, Shumeng Li, Zahra Mansoor, Timothée Perron, Zoé Siau, Kit Szasz, Lara Ulusoy.

Artists

Soraya Abdelhouaret, Océane-Maria Adjovi, Giovanni Altieri, Shelim Alvarado, Dyan Daniel Assogo, Eugène Atget, Gianfranco Baruchello, Baya, Romain Bernini, Pierre-Amédée-Marcel Béronneau, Michel Blazy, Félix Bonfils Et Atelier, Rosa Bonheur, Wanda Elisabeth Bouleau-Rabaud, Jean Bhownagary, Luciano Castelli, Norbert Chautard, Arthur Coquille-Hopfner, Henri Cueco, Storm De Hirsch, Princesse Diakumpuna, Amahiguere Dolo, Azzeazy, Guillaume-Benjamin Amant Duchenne De Boulogne, Aysha E Arar, Mimosa Echard, Laura Esparch, Frederik Exner, Nina Fiorentini, Diego Garcia Lara, Guillaume-Sulpice Dit Paul Gavarni, Clémence Gbonon, Fengyi Guo, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Roger Hardy, Suzanne Husky, Fanny Irina, Svay Ken, Käthe Kollwitz, Shengqi Kong, Adrien Lagrange, Emmanuelle Lainé, Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato, Gherasim Luca, Frédérique Loutz, Rose Lowder, Antoinette Lubaki, Turiya Magadlela, Joshua Merchan Rodriguez, Pierre Molinier, Céleste Moneger, Zora Neale Hurston, Aryle Nsengiyumva, Christel Pereira, Liselor Perez, Enzo Perrier, Romain Pommelet, Jonathan Potana, Pierre Petit, Chloé Quenum, Axel Ramat, Lou Rappeneau, Akshay Raj Singh Rathore, Man Ray, Odilon Redon, Paul Richer, Sofia Salazar Rosales, Juliana Seraphim, Seumboy Vrainom :€, Marcel Storr, Shooshie Sulaiman, Eden Tinto Collins, Marion Verboom, François Verdier, Yizhi Wan, Isabelle Waternaux, Yue Yu, Anna Zemankova et anonymes.

Download the exhibition labels

Practical informations

Wednesday April 09 - Sunday June 01 2025 (Closing: Thursday, May 1, 2025)
Palais des Beaux-Arts
Beaux-Arts de Paris, 13 quai Malaquais, Paris 6e
Wednesday to Sunday, 1pm-7pm
2€, 5€ or 10€ it's up to you!

The " Artistes & Métiers de l'exposition " program is supported by Société Générale

Petit Pierre, Statue de la Melpomène Papier albuminé, 26 x 19 cm © Beaux-Arts de Paris, Grand Palais RMN / Thierry Ollivier

Céleste Moneger, Toujours pas New-York Vidéo, capture d'écran

Akshay Rathore, White thing creeping in black 02, 2022 Feutre et aérosol sur carton, 78 x 97 cm

Odilon Redon, Le Buddha, 1895 Lithographie sur chine appliqué, 60 x 42,5 cm © Beaux-Arts de Paris, Grand Palais RMN / Thierry Ollivier

Henri Cueco, Autoportrait aux feuilles de pissenlit, 2002 Acrylique sur toile, 55,3 x 46,5 cm

Chloé Quenum, 19 juillet 2019, 2022 Courtesy of the artist and galleria Martina Simeti, Milan © Aurélien Mole

Romain Pommelet, En marche, 2023, chaussures, équerre en métal, simili-cuir, mousse, serre-joints, contreplaqué, dimensions variables

Jonathan Potana, Mouvement Primaire, Centre d'Art Ygrec - ENSAPC, 2024 Caméléon dans le formole suspendu avec fil de cuivre sur vélo et pierres, 5 x 1,3 m © Objet Pointus

Océane Maria Adjovi, L'origine de nos actes, 2024 Huile sur toile, 162 x 130 c

L'art et la vie et inversement presents the 26 artists who received the Diplôme National Supérieur d'Arts Plastiques from Beaux-Arts de Paris with the Congratulations of the Jury in 2024.

Their works present a wide diversity of subjects, materials and intentions. The challenge of showing them together is to question what they express about a generation, and what they say about today's world.

What emerges from these works is the students' desire and way of constantly blending art and life. Their lives appear in their works in iconographic, thematic and narrative forms, and their works integrate their lifestyles. Through them, we see the fragility of the world and the threat it faces. There's nothing new in taking close friends and family members as models, but this approach has another meaning here: L'art et la vie et inversement reveals a flexible, fluid world in which reversals are possible, where landscapes speak of inner worlds, and intimate monologues speak of the world as it is.

These are horizons inspired by childhood visions, inhabited by singular forms of spirituality, or marked by the tragedies of history. Bodies are put to the test in pain, indeterminacy, hallucination, tenderness or malice. Gleaners in the city or in nature, these artists often appear inclined to help each other and to dialogue between the arts. Landscapes, and the human and non-human beings who populate them, are sometimes themselves the actors in a film. Characters emerge from another film to enter life. Other works deliver more domestic, intimate visions. For them, gentleness is sometimes a way of tackling the toughest subjects. A vision of a world in transformation, of an enigmatic present, these positions are based on the complexity of human beings. What emerges is a shared humanity, efforts to hold on to worlds on the verge of disappearing, narratives sometimes beyond the realms of reality.

Curator : Anaël Pigeat

2024 Félicités : Gilad ASHERY, Örs BATMAZ, Abdelhak BENALLOU, Margot BERNARD, Zoé BERNARDI, Thomas BUSWELL, Anna DE CASTRO BARBOSA, Alessandro DI LORENZO, Hugo FRANCONERI, Clémence GBONON, Claire GITTON, Julien HEINTZ, Hélène JANICOT, Ruoxi JIN, Bahar KOCABEY, Joshua MERCHAN RODRIGUEZ, Alexandre NITZSCHE CYSNE, Sergiy PETLYUK, Hajar SATARI, Anne SIMIN SHITRIT, Isadora SOARES BELLETTI, Hugo VIANA DA SILVA, Leïla VILMOUTH, Louise VO TAN, Libo WEI, Alexandre YANG

Practical informations

Wednesday, February 12, 2025 to Sunday, March 16, 2025
Wednesday to Sunday, 1pm-7pm, Wednesday night until 9pm
Palais des Beaux-Arts
13 quai Malaquais, 75006 Paris

Responsible ticketing €2, €5 or €10, it's up to you!

Around the exhibition Chère Melpomène

They talk about it...

Nocturnes program on Wednesday evenings

Curators

Artists

Practical informations

This exhibition, dear to Beaux-Arts de Paris, where he had been teaching since 2015, presents to the public for the first time a substantial body of some fifty drawings, produced between 2006 and 2021.

Practical information

L'art et la vie et inversement presents the 26 artists who received the Diplôme National Supérieur d'Arts Plastiques from Beaux-Arts de Paris with the Congratulations of the Jury in 2024.

Practical informations

An evening dedicated to the trajectories of foreign students who have passed through the Beaux-Arts de Paris, with a tribute to the artist Ellsworth Kelly, featured in the exhibition.

An evening of piano music by students from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris and the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional - Ida Rubinstein de Paris.

Viewpoint visit with Hélène Delprat, artist, and Valérie Sonnier, artist and teacher at the Beaux-Arts.

Viewpoint visit to the Souvenirs de jeunesse exhibition with Daniel Schlier, artist and teacher at the Beaux-Arts, and Alice Thomine-Berrada, exhibition curator and head of collections at the Beaux-Arts de Paris.