Mystery Monday

Keeping an eye on Paris Design Week.

October newsletter: 

A peek into some of Montmartre's hidden interiors

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Sunday spark

 It's Paris Design Week / Maison&Object 2026

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Paris is pulsing with creativity today as Maison&Objet Pulse* fills the halls at Villepinte and Paris Design Week spills across the city’s most inspiring neighborhoods - from Marais galleries and Bastille installations to Saint-Germain showrooms and the Grand Palais’s floral spectacle. It features what’s new and next in design, emerging talents and young brands, bold, sensitive, and sustainable creativity, a dynamic, forward-looking energy focusing on seven immersive sectors: Decor & Design, Cook & Share, Fine Craft, Fashion & Accessories, Gift & Play, Fragrance & Ambiance, Wellness & Beauty.

On this sunny September Sunday, the capital feels like one big open studio, where emerging talents, craft traditions, and bold new interiors invite wandering, discovery, and feeling the energy of design in motion.  - BPJ

 Official Website 

 

* Maison&Objet Pulse is the official name of the September edition of the famous Maison&Objet trade fair in Paris that takes place 10 - 14 September 2026 at the Paris Nord Villepinte Exhibition Centre and is themed, “Pulse in Motion” 

 

Soaring Saturday

 

Defying gravity... One floating mobile at a time.

 

Upcoming special newsletter: a look back in photos at the Calder exhibition

 

Fondation Louis Vuitton 

Architect: Frank Gehry

 

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Next major exhibition: "Gustave Fayet, Collector - Designer. Icons of Modern Art," opening October 9, 2026 

 

 

 

  

Monolith Monday

 Flexing and flaunting for over a century... One muscle at a time.

 

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In Greek mythology, the atlante (also called a telamon) comes from the Greek Titan Atlas, who was condemned by Zeus to hold up the sky on his shoulders for eternity. In classical architecture it is a support column or pillar sculpted in the shape of a man, the male counterpart to the female caryatid. Its massive size - the oldest still around are over 24 feet tall - became a classic Beaux-Arts/early-20th-century Parisian decorative architectural feature, and this pair, sculpted by Sylvain Kinsburger for a post-Haussmannian apartment building on rue de Rivoli, has been around since 1905. - BPJ

Window Wednesday

Steinlen's black cat in a window, waiting. 

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“Tournée du Chat Noir”
Théophile Alexandre Steinlen
(1859–1923) 

Last days Calder

ALEXANDER CALDER

(1898-1976)

 

Rêver en équilibre / Dream in Balance

Fondation Louis Vuitton

Ends Sunday August 16, 2026 

 

Suzanne Sunday

 Late afternoon in the studio of artist Suzanne Valadon.

Musée de Montmartre
12 rue Cortot 75018

 

Museum Monday

 ADYA & OTTO VAN REES

 At the heart of the avant-garde 

 

Ends September 13, 2026 

 

Musée de Montmartre
12 rue Cortot 75018

 

 

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Dutch artist couple Adya van Rees-Dutilh (1876-1959) and Otto van Rees (1884-1957) have returned to Montmartre, offering a fascinating example of a true artistic partnership at the heart of 20th-century modernism. They lived and worked in Montmartre's now famous Bateau-Lavoir (Picasso, Braque, van Dongen, Mondrian, Modigliani and poet/writer Max Jacob were part of their circle) and later, Montparnasse, in the era that helped define Pointillism, Cubism, Cloisonnism (with its flat planes of color, heavy dark contours and simplified forms) and eventually, Abstraction. The current exhibition at the Musée de Montmartre - with its refreshing garden, small tea room, and sweeping views - is the perfect opportunity to discover them. - BPJ

 

 

 

 

Museum Monday

 

 

Came for the AC, stayed for the art.

Above: Raoul Dufy's epic mural

 

 

MUSÉE D'ART MODERNE DE PARIS

 

 Check for current exhibitions

11 Avenue du Président Wilson 75116

 

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“A summer the likes of which I had never seen and never believed possible in our temperate climate: days when the thermometer in the shade rose to 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit), not a single blade of grass, not a single flower by the 1st of July, the trees turning yellow and losing their leaves, the earth cracking open as if to bury us, the terror of running out of water from one day to the next… - George Sand's description of the heatwave in France in September 1870, in her book Le Journal d’un voyageur pendant la guerre ("The Journal of a Traveler During the War") - the Franco-Prussian War - part of a hot dry summer.  - BPJ

 

Mona Monday

  

She's ditched the bulletproof glass for headphones, tattoos and a café crème.

 

Floral flashback

Giverny, home and inspiration to Claude Monet.

 Claude Monet's Giverny

A day trip from Paris 

 

Metro Monday

 

 

Paris through two lenses: a camera's and an artist's.

Window Wednesday

An atelier d'artiste in a private Montmartre courtyard at the Golden Hour. 

 

Monumental Monday

 

Teaser view of La Caverne du Pont Neuf, a goliath temporary installation by French artist JR on Paris’s oldest bridge, from a bicycle.

 

June 6 til June 28, 2026

 

Update:

Due. to wind damage opening delayed til June 15 

Transcendent Tuesday

 

Colossal projections bring Renaissance works to life. 

Above: Michaelangelo's David w/heart-shaped pupils 

Discover the Renaissance

Da Vinci, Raphael, Michaelangelo, more 

   

L'Atelier des Lumières

38 rue Saint-Maur 75011

 

Ends June 27, 2026

 

Window Wednesday

Watercolors on a storybook street. 

 

Mona Monday

 

 

Mona Lisa re-imagined in a favorite Left Bank corner.

 

Tuesday treat

 

One last look from the top of the Centre Georges-Pompidou (a.k.a. Beaubourg) before it closed.

 Re-opening: 2030 

 

Throwback Thursday

The Grand Palais sparkles through winter trees.

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Exhibition: 

Henri Matisse

1941 - 1954

 

Ends July 26, 2026 

 

 

Mona Monday

The eyes have it.

Exhibition:

Discover the Renaissance

 

Da Vinci, Raphael, Michaelangelo...

   

L'Atelier des Lumières

38 rue Saint-Maur 75011

 

Ends June 27, 2026