Following its presentation at the Centre Pompidou in 2023–2024, the exceptional donation made by Marc Chagall’s granddaughters, Meret and Bella Meyer — entered into the collections of the Musée national d’art moderne in 2022-2023 — is exhibited at the Musée national Marc Chagall in 2026.

The 141 donated works bear witness to the richness and diversity of Marc Chagall’s creative output. The ensemble brings together, on the one hand, forty-one sketches and maquettes produced for the ceiling of the Opéra de Paris, inaugurated in 1964. On the other hand, it includes sixty-four sketches for stage curtains and costumes designed for the ballet The Firebird by Igor Stravinsky, revived by the Ballet Theatre of New York in 1945 with choreography by Adolph Bolm. Finally, twelve ceramics and sculptures, along with twenty-four collages, reveal the artist’s constant curiosity for new techniques and materials, particularly evident between the 1950s and the 1970s.

Venue: musée Jean Cocteau le Bastion

The portraits of Jean Cocteau’s friends stand alongside his celebrated self-portraits. The Prince of Poets appears through the eyes of his peers, in elegant likenesses that show him young, at the dawn of his twenties. In artistic Montmartre, he moves among the creative circles of his time and sits for leading figures such as Modigliani and Picasso.

The Séverin Wunderman collection also brings together photographs by Philippe Halsman and Irving Penn, as well as a silkscreen by Andy Warhol produced in 1985 for the opening of the museum in Irvine. Warhol acknowledged the profound influence the poet had on his life and work. Among the major works held by the museum is Self-Portrait Without a Face, shown alongside portraits of Cocteau’s close circle: Picasso, Raymond Radiguet, Christian Bérard, and Yul Brynner. The exhibition unfolds across four sections: Self-Portraits, Sacred Monsters, Dancers and Writers, and Musicians.

This exhibition retraces the deep, intense friendship between English painter Francis Bacon and American photographer Peter Beard over more than twenty years. It reveals a fruitful artistic dialogue in which the two men were both subjects and fertile sources of inspiration, constantly influencing one another, and explores their shared interests, especially in African wildlife.