7 Essential Institutional Exhibitions to Visit in Paris
From a historical exhibition exploring the relationship between museum director and curator Pontus Hulten and artists Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely at the Grand Palais to a selection of works dealing with light and color by Heinz Mack at the Maison La Roche designed by Le Corbusier

With Art Basel Paris returning to the magnificent Grand Palais for the second year since it was completely renovated and numerous other art and design fairs—including Paris Internationale, Design Miami.Paris, Asia NOW, 7 rue Froissart, AKAA—Also Known As Africa, Place des Vosges, and OFFSCREEN—taking place in the City of Light this week, Paris is undeniably the place to be. Along with London and New York, the French capital is one of the international hotspots for art right now, and the city’s institutions are putting on their best shows during the fair.
From a historical exhibition exploring the relationship between museum director and curator Pontus Hulten and artists Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely at the Grand Palais’s upper galleries, to a selection of works dealing with light and color by Heinz Mack at the Maison La Roche designed by Le Corbusier, as well as retrospectives and surveys celebrating the careers of Gerhard Richter at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Melvin Edwards at the Palais de Tokyo, and George Condo at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Galerie has rounded up the top institutional shows to visit during your stay in Paris.
1. Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely, Pontus Hulten | Grand Palais
This engaging exhibition, presented in partnership with Centre Pompidou, examines the relationship between influential museum director and curator Pontus Hulten and renowned artists Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely, whom he championed from the 1960s through the 1990s. A comprehensive survey of their avant-garde artworks from that era, the show highlights pieces Hulten exhibited and acquired for various museums where he worked, including Stockholm’s Moderna Museet and the Centre Pompidou. Through documentation of the married artists’ exhibitions, public projects, and actual works—including De Saint Phalle’s sculptural paintings with balloons of pigments, which she released by shooting at them, and Tinguely’s kinetic sculptures made from scrap metal and machine engines—the show celebrates the experimental spirit and collaborative nature of these dynamic times, when Nouveau Réalisme and Pop Art dominated the international art scene.
Through January 4, 2026
2. Gerhard Richter | Fondation Louis Vuitton
Following major retrospective exhibitions of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Joan Mitchell, Mark Rothko, and David Hockney, the Fondation Louis Vuitton is now focusing on the renowned German artist Gerhard Richter. The 93-year-old Richter is best known for his photorealistic paintings of people, places, and historical events that he explored early in his career, as well as his later experimental abstractions, which have made him one of the most sought-after contemporary artists. This must-see exhibition features over 270 works created from 1962 to 2024, making it the largest retrospective ever dedicated to him. Covering his first painting from 1962 through his most recent canvases from 2017, along with drawings created since he stopped painting in 2017, as well as glass and steel sculptures, earlier works on paper, and overpainted photographs, the show guides visitors through the various periods and transitions of his career, emphasizing his status as one of the most important and globally recognized artists of his generation.
Through March 2, 2026
3. Melvin Edwards | Palais de Tokyo
Melvin Edwards is a pioneering figure in contemporary African-American art, known for his distinctive sculptures and three-dimensional installations made from welded steel, barbed wire, chains, and machinery parts. Drawing on the history of abstraction, modern sculpture, and printmaking, his work reflects the social and political struggles of the civil rights movement in the United States, with themes of race, protest, and social injustice woven into his practice. His sculptures often serve as intimate tributes and monuments, acting as portals that connect the past and present of Black Atlantic regions. They are both tangible and subtle, radical and detailed, exploring ideas and materials while reflecting his interest in language, architecture, and knowledge creation. Edwards’ work combines poetry and jazz, showcasing his ties with poets and musicians in New York and Paris, making this the ideal place for an overview of the 88-year-old artist’s work.
Through February 16
4. Heinz Mack | Fondation Le Corbusier, Maison La Roche
One of the cofounders, along with Otto Piene, of Group Zero in 1957—an avant-garde art movement emphasizing light and motion to explore new ideas—94-year-old Heinz Mack has spent nearly 70 years investigating perception and abstraction. United in Group Zero with renowned artists like Günther Uecker, Yves Klein, Lucio Fontana, and Piero Manzoni, he developed his own distinctive language of light and color through innovative painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, and photography—while also creating works for public spaces, churches, and stage sets. The pieces displayed at Maison La Roche, an architectural masterpiece and UNESCO World Heritage Site, are presented in collaboration with Almine Rech and span from 1995 to 2021. Built for a banker and a modern art collector, the Purist villa was divided into two sections: a gallery and private rooms, with Mack’s artwork once again bringing the house to life through his timeless use of light and color.
Through December 20
5. Daniel Buren, Mentor of Miles Greenberg | Reiffers Art Center
The fifth edition of the Reiffers Initiatives mentorship exhibition features a permanent work on the building by Daniel Buren and a site-specific glass ceiling by the esteemed French conceptual artist unveiled at the start of the show, along with new monumental sculptures in cast aluminum and a new performance by 27-year-old Canadian artist Miles Greenberg. Following collaborations between Rashid Johnson and Kenny Dunkan in 2021, Kehinde Wiley and Alexandre Diop in 2022, Lorna Simpson and Gaëlle Choisne, and Ugo Rondinone and Tarek Lakhrissi in 2024, this year’s mentorship exhibition pairs Buren, who is internationally known for his site-specific works engaging architectural sites, with Greenberg, who spent four formative years in Paris and has since gained recognition through his participation in the 2024 Venice Biennale and with performances and exhibitions in New York, London, Amsterdam, Yokohama, Marrakech, and Dubai. Back in Paris, Greenberg is applying the lessons learned from an 87-year-old master and making them his own.
Through December 13
6. George Condo | Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris
An innovative painter, draftsman, and sculptor George Condo began his creative journey working in a silkscreen shop and playing bass in a Boston punk band before moving to New York in the late 1970s. Emerging as a painter in the lively East Village scene of the 1980s, while working as an assistant to Andy Warhol, Condo developed a distinctive pop-surrealistic style that blended colorful cartoon graphics with a touch of realism. This exhibition, following the museum’s retrospectives on Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring—both of whom shared an artistic friendship with Condo—serves as the final installment of a New York trilogy focusing on the rise of a new generation of painters in the 1980s. The most significant exhibition of works by the 67-year-old artist, who spent 10 years living and working in Paris, revisits more than four decades of Condo’s career, showcasing about 80 paintings, 110 drawings—grouped in a space dedicated to graphic arts—and roughly 20 sculptures displayed throughout the exhibition, complemented by major loans from several international museums.
Through February 8
7. Minimal | Bourse de Commerce
A major survey exhibition dedicated to Minimalist art, based on over fifty years of collecting related paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by François Pinault, “Minimal” features more than a hundred important works by fifty artists from Europe, the Americas, and Asia. These pieces demonstrate the diversity of the movement since the 1960s, when a new generation of artists embraced a radical new approach to art. The exhibition explores the global shift in art from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s, highlighting the movement’s influence, especially its radical reimagining of the art object. Marked by minimalistic approaches, simplified aesthetics, and a reevaluation of how artworks connect with viewers, artists like Donald Judd, On Kawara, Walter de Maria, Lygia Pape, Richard Serra, Charlotte Posenenske, and other minimalist artists featured in the show began questioning traditional display methods to create something new.
Through January 19