Collection Lambert
Founded 21 years ago by art dealer and collector Yvon Lambert, this collection presents major works from the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. The places that house the Lambert Collection, made available to it by the City of Avignon, are exceptionally rich in heritage, right in the heart of the city and of Provence. Two very beautiful mansions built in the 18th century by Jean-Baptiste Franque, the hotels of Caumont and Montfaucon, have been remarkably redesigned respectively by Rudy Ricciotti and the brothers Cyrille and Laurent Berger to meet the needs of the museum.
Founded 21 years ago by art dealer and collector Yvon Lambert, this collection presents major works from the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. The places that house the Lambert Collection, made available to it by the City of Avignon, are exceptionally rich in heritage, right in the heart of the city and of Provence. Two very beautiful mansions built in the 18th century by Jean-Baptiste Franque, the hotels of Caumont and Montfaucon, have been remarkably redesigned respectively by Rudy Ricciotti and the brothers Cyrille and Laurent Berger to meet the needs of the museum.
Programme
A Song of Love: Jean-Michel Othoniel and the Collection Lambert
As part of the major event OTHONIEL COSMOS ou les fantômes de l'amour, Jean-Michel Othoniel is taking over 10 emblematic venues in the papal city with 250 artworks, including 160 previously unseen.
At the Collection Lambert, Othoniel collaborates with a display of works from the permanent collection (by Robert Ryman, Sol LeWitt, Donald Judd, Louise Lawler, Roni Horn and Nan Goldin, among others) that have had a major influence on Othoniel's work.
Constantin Nitsche, La Valse des fleurs
At the Collection Lambert, German artist Constantin Nitsche is presenting his first major solo exhibition in a public institution. In the vaulted basement rooms of the Hôtel de Montfaucon, he showcases around twenty works specially created in his Marseille studio.
Constantin Nitsche’s paintings are delicate constructions where figures and scenes from his everyday life blend with fictional objects and situations, alongside references drawn from the history of modern and classical art, as well as cinema. Animals, still lifes, human figures—his wife, his children, Joseph, an artist friend—appear suspended in space and time, ethereal, their gazes unreadable. In the rooms with luminous ceilings reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, the works unfold like a series of epiphanies emerging from the artist’s memory, carried along in a choreography that evokes the movement of Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers.
Gabriel Abrantes, Limbo
The American-Portuguese artist and filmmaker has been invited to the Collection Lambert for his first major exhibition in France. Internationally acclaimed for his films — including Diamantino, which won the Critics’ Week Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2018 — he will showcase in Avignon the full breadth of his work, where video installations, films, paintings, and drawings intertwine, and where new technologies meet poetry with power and elegance.
Inside the Hôtel de Montfaucon, he will present a series of recent drawings, paintings, and videos, including the large-scale installation Bardo Loops, commissioned in 2024 by CAM Gulbenkian in Lisbon and unveiled for the reopening of its modern art center. Through this wide range of media, all mastered with disarming virtuosity, Gabriel Abrantes portrays a strange world in which algorithms and artificial intelligence appear to have taken control.
Access
The Lambert Collection
5, rue Violette - 84000 Avignon
+33 (0)4 90 16 56 23
collectionlambert.com
September to June: Wednesday to Friday 2-6pm, 11am -6pm on week-ends.
July: Every day from 11am to 6pm.
Closed on Monday 28 July.
August: Tuesday to Sunday, 11am to 6pm.
Locate other art venues in the vicinity on the map.
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PLACES TO DISCOVER
• La navette fluviale : cross the Rhône for free from the Pont d'Avignon to the Île de la Barthelasse with the river shuttle. On the other bank, enjoy beautiful walks with views of the Pont d’Avignon, the ramparts or the Palais des Papes.
• Musée du Petit Palais : a siginificant art collection of Italian paintings, Avignonese sculptures and paintings from the Ecole d’Avignon.
• Musée Calvet : the Musée Calvet collections comprise archaeology, decorative arts, ethnography or fine arts.
• Maison Jean Vilar : an exhibition, archival and research centre, a place for encounters and entertainments in keeping with the popular theatre spirit.
• Utopia Manutention : an arthouse cinema at the foot of the Palais des Papes, with a restaurant.
• La Mémoire du Monde : a bookshop combining literature and art with a selection of small publishers and other rare texts.
• L’Eau Vive : this cosy bookshop for children holds creative workshops, readings, and book signings.
PLACES TO EAT
• Le Violette : inventive cuisine combining local products with flavours from elsewhere in the shade of century-old plane trees, far from the hustle and bustle of the city.
• Subito : simple recipes and fresh products for Italian cuisine lovers.
• Come a Roma : delicious Roman pizzas served with sunny tones.
• Bella Ciao : an utopian bakery in downtown Avignon offering different varieties of breads, sandwiches and pizzas.
PLACES TO STAY
• L’Hôtel de l’Europe : one of the most ancient hotel in France, in an ideal place where you can have a drink.
• Le Lieu : a charming guesthouse and a restaurant in a place full of history and stories, a Cordeliers convent in the 13th century and a bourgeois house in the 18th and 19th centuries.
