Jenny Holzer. J’ai vu
When: 20.10.2026 10:30
Where: 48.860352, 2.326755
Organizer: Admin
The exhibition will take various forms, starting with light projections on the museum façade, Seine side, during the inauguration week in October. The excerpts chosen by Holzer – ranging from artists' letters kept in the museum archives to contemporary literary or political writings of the time – will transform the building’s exterior and offer passersby an immersive, almost timeless experience.
Inside, an LED installation specifically designed for the venue, animated with colorful streams of text, will allow visitors to immerse themselves in content drawn from the history represented in the museum’s collections and in dialogue with it. This luminous work echoes the building’s metamorphosis, from a 19th‑century train station to a modern museum: a custom program, traversing the space, reflects the animated flow of visitors and recalls the original function of the Gare d’Orsay.
Crossing a selection of works from the collections displayed in the domed rooms dedicated to history painting, naturalism and symbolism, the LED installation will dialogue with Holzer’s paintings made on gold, platinum and palladium leaf. These paintings, where erasure and concealment become visible, change over the days according to the variations of light from the Seine. A large part of their content remains hidden, but traces of difficult and essential decisions persist, echoing the history paintings exhibited in the neighboring galleries.
The exhibition will also present stone benches designed in dialogue with the museum’s architecture and its permanent collections. Created especially for the occasion, these new sculptures, many of which are engraved with texts from the 1848–1914 period represented at the Musée d’Orsay, will be placed in various spaces on the ground floor and in the galleries. The unusual hues of these benches respond to the remarkable diversity of stones used in the museum’s sculptures and pedestals, in line with Gae Aulenti’s original project.
Together, the works presented inside and outside the museum testify to the inseparable intertwining of past and present, and to the lasting bond that unites France and the United States.
Light projections outdoors during several evenings around the opening in October 2026 (dates to come).
Tags: installation, light art, museum, exhibition
Source: https://www.paris.fr/evenements/jenny-holzer-j-ai-vu-117935
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