Caldas's furniture, crafted from discarded tree trunks and designed with his fellow canoe-carving friends in his hometown of Salvador de Bahia, the most African city in the Americas, is of the same essence: resourcefulness, inventiveness, and poetry.

This permanent exhibition showcases what makes up the “bulk” of the museum, telling all the stories that led to the acquisitions, the life stories of the items, and the reasons why they were brought into the museum’s reserves, past and present. Alongside the 1,200 objects and documents from the Mucem’s historical collections or those more recently acquired by the museum, an immersive digital mediation system uses a selection of objects to evoke the idea of ‘popular culture’ that permeates its collections.

For four millennia, motherhood has been at the heart of the stories, rituals and images that shape societies. The exhibition “Bonnes Mères” presents Mediterranean motherhood as a social construct, a political issue and an artistic subject, through an immersive, diachronic journey tracing its history from Antiquity to the present day, in a constant dialogue between eras and artworks. From ancient mother goddesses to Marseille’s Bonne Mère, from patriotic mothers to contemporary artists, the exhibition questions representations of motherhood often laden with expectations, and reveals the plurality of maternal experiences.

The scenography is immersive and radiant, guiding visitors along a sensorial journey structured in three sections. “Bonnes Mères” opens with the imaginaries surrounding traditional figures of motherhood, often idealised and romanticised. It then turns to more complex and singular realities, sometimes invisible, shedding light on intimate experiences long kept silent — such as perinatal grief or pregnancy termination. The exhibition concludes with a focus on transmission and mother–child bonds, decoding patterns of imitation and inherited codes.

Gallifet’s spring exhibition presents a selection of more than one hundred photographs by the French photographer François Halard, including many that will be seen by the public for the first time.

Based between Paris, the south of France and Greece, his work draws on the history and memory of those places – across the globe but so often Mediterranean – that create a common bond, that tell the tale of lives entwined, their past, present and future.

The artist’s impassioned quest for beauty takes us on a journey through the countryside of Greece and Italy, into the studios of some of the last century’s great modernists, to the gardens of Giverny, and inside a house in Arles where unimagined poetry greets us at every turn.

Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain invite us for an exploration of a field of stars and an immersion in the mystery of the creation of the universe and the celestial bodies. For more than 20 years, this Franco-Brazilian artist duo has been conducting artistic research into the way we represent the world and how it manifests itself to us. In order to do this, they have created alphabets of shapes that renew our perceptions of our environment, time and space through a unique linguistic and plastic approach.

The exhibition brings to life a landmark installation following on from the Flowering of Light exhibition for the Prix Marcel Duchamp 2024 at the Centre Pompidou. The Frac Sud plays host to the Prix Marcel Duchamp award artworks, creating a conversation with other pieces exploring the stars and creation of the universe. The exhibition takes us on a journey through the cosmos that whisks us away to a world of stars and flowers, connected to the sun and moon by the trail of light through the ages of creation.

The Field of Stars exhibition was supported by the Instituto Guimarães Rosa and the Brazilian Embassy in Paris
In partnership with Galerie Martine Aboucaya

A unique dialogue between pieces by Japanese artists of different generations. The exhibition explores the emotional, ecological and his-torical bonds that connect us to our habitats, set against our modern lifestyles and the ensuing envi-ronmental disasters which have made these invisible connections both invaluable and unstable.

Based on the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident that hit North East Japan on March 11th 2011, an event that destroyed people’s lives, society and the environment, the exhibition displays pieces crafted post-Fukushima alongside artwork seeped in the history and rapid modernisation of 1970s Japan. The design echoes the FRAC’s architecture by Kengo Kuma and the exhibition demonstrates how the events of March 11th and the pieces they inspired bear the hallmarks of late 20th century Japanese art.

In partnership with Japan Foundation and La Maison de la culture du Japon in Paris

Kuame Akoto, also known as Almighty God, is a preacher and street artist who uses a fence as a gallery. His paintings are inspired by authentically African scenes and figures, framed with wise and humorous precepts.

After having honored Jean Genet, Jean Giono and Gustave Flaubert, the Mucem continues its series of literary exhibitions by celebrating a hero born in Spain, who has spread worldwide to the point of becoming a mythical figure: Don Quixote.

In 1605, Miguel de Cervantes created a character who believes himself a knight-errant in a book where he is little more than an antihero. Like an old man returned to childhood, he acts out the tales born of his imagination both “for real” and “for fun”. With his loyal Sancho by his side, he sets out to rescue the oppressed who never called for help and princesses no one else can see. One declaims lofty, antiquated speeches, the other answers with endless chains of proverbs. Together they ride into parodic battles, while the author revels in clever reflections on fiction and on himself.

And yet, over the span of four centuries, the tremors of this laughter, whether mischievous or dizzying, have absorbed the disquiet of modernity: the romantic pursuit of an impossible ideal, metaphysical solitude, the shifting play of illusion and disillusion, and the quiet heroism of failure. In contrast, the exhibition offers an original approach by returning to the comic, unruly and popular dimensions of the work, as well as to its boundless presence across the most diverse artistic forms and within everyday culture.

Venue: Fort Saint-Jean / Bâtiment Georges Henri Rivière

Between the end of June and the middle of July 1831, underwater volcanic activity gave rise to a new island in the Mediterranean, in the Sicilian Channel across from Tunisia. While sailors and coastal dwellers feared the awakening of a sea monster, the nascent land aroused the curiosity of scientists and the desire of European powers amid their colonial expansion. Within weeks, the island was claimed for its strategic position by Great Britain, France and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, among others. The rivalry, however, was short-lived: barely six months after its appearance, the newly formed island vanished beneath the waves of the Mediterranean.

Through films, videos and photographs, Clément Cogitore – an artist with a philosophical approach – speculates on the emergence, collapse, and possible re-emergence of the volcano. Blending documentary and fiction, his metaphorical intuition weaves together premonitions, popular beliefs, archival documents, as well as scientific and cartographic records: in his hands, “Ferdinandea” becomes a mirror reflecting different relationships to the world and possible futures.

Following the success of the exhibition “Fashion Folklore”, the Mucem will devote an exhibition in 2026 to Mossi Traoré, an unconventional figure on the French fashion scene, for whom couture is both a field of experimentation, a tool for transmission, and a collective language. Conceived in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition offers an immersion into a world where fashion engages in dialogue with popular culture, urban arts and traditional craftsmanship.

Sculptural silhouettes, videos, and textiles interacting with the museum’s archives, along with artisanal gestures, punctuate a sensorial and participatory journey. Visitors are invited to touch materials, listen, create and feel. Trained as much in the streets as alongside masters of couture, Mossi Traoré has developed a refined and committed aesthetic.

An exhibition supported by the Embassy of the Netherlands in France and the Aix-en-Provence Biennale 2026.

Ghita Skali, an artist from Casablanca based in Amsterdam. Her multidisciplinary practice includes installations, videos, and interventions. She draws on strange news items, rumours, and historical facts to disrupt institutional power structures. Her work blends humour and critique, resulting in projects that circulate beyond exhibition spaces, through alternative merchandise trade, (il)legal documents, and objects one takes home.

In her practice, Ghita Skali explores the mechanisms behind the production of official narratives, marginalised or censored histories, and the ways in which fiction seeps into fact, and vice versa. During her residency, Ghita Skali wishes to develop a project around the objects that remain after death. These sometimes trivial items become traces, presences, or, on the contrary, things one tries to forget. As if these objects, already inert and silent, became even more so. In her work, Ghita addresses our fear of illness and our relationship to mourning, these “pains” present in different contexts, which we might share. However, class, gender, race, and other markers of inequality shape and alter our relationships to care and to the living. These situations generate different scales of anger, bitterness, and injustice. But is there something shared, something common, in the sorrow of losing loved ones?

Sessions: Tuesday 3 and 17 February 2025
Exhibition walkthrough: Saturday 23 May & artistic and civic celebration on 14 July
Highlight event as part of the Printemps de l’Art Contemporain PAC festival: Saturday 23 May

Invited to conceive a double solo exhibition between Marseille and Avignon — her first institutional presentation in France — the artist Agata Ingarden conceived the two installations as “two distinct atmospheric states through which we perceive the same reality.”

While the exhibition at theCollection Lambertin Avignon unfolds under the sign of moonlight and darkness, the works presented at Triangle-Astérides — all made of glass and playing with the idea of transparency, both literal and metaphorical — instead invite the viewer’s gaze to seep everywhere, pushing the scopic drive to its extreme. In broad daylight, in full view of all.

The Franco-Polish artist views these sculptures as portals, granting access to the enigmatic Dream House World. “Dream House is not a narrative with a beginning or an end, but a fictional infrastructure. What matters is simply understanding that there is an underlying system [to our reality]. We do not know exactly what takes place there, but we can imagine it.”

In 2024, the [mac] acquired Louisa Babari's work, Journal of an Algerian Student in Moscow, a silent slideshow composed of documentary and personal images drawn from the artist's family archives. We wanted to delve deeper into the artist's work by entrusting her with the experimental space of the [mac]room. Photographic, collage, and sound works address the ancient world, especially the Berber and Numidian civilisations, within the Algerian context.

In partnership with the Passages Contemporary Art Centre in Troyes and art centre Rhizome in Algiers.

The exhibition looks at the way in which the Mediterranean has been constructed as an element of natural, artistic and ethnological heritage – three approaches comparable in construction over time. It shows how museums have presented the Mediterranean theme. The exhibition will present the Mucem and its identity from a historical and disciplinary perspective, demonstrating both its origins and its uniqueness in the museum landscape.

This 8th edition of the “De leur temps” Triennial gathers more than 130 works from 70 French and international private collections, spanning painting, video, sculpture, performance and installation. Since 2004, the Triennial has highlighted committed collectors and reflected contemporary sensibilities.

This edition questions the climate amid ecological, political, and social upheavals, presenting the collection as a living ecosystem and inviting reflection on memory, preservation, and transformation.