This winter, with the support of Art Exhibitions China, the Musée Guimet is taking visitors on a journey to the heart of Chang'an, the glorious, cosmopolitan capital of the Tang dynasty (618-907).

A cultural and commercial crossroads on the Silk Roads, this sprawling city was the largest in the world in the 8th century.

More than 200 millenia-old exceptional works of art loaned by numerous museums in China's provinces invite visitors to discover this city of wonders, frequented by thousands of merchants, pilgrims, scholars, musicians, artists, craftsmen and court aristocrats from all over the empire and beyond.

From 19 November 2024 to 16 March 2025, the Musée de Cluny - Musée National du Moyen Âge is hosting an exhibition on medieval carved decorations from the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris.

Not since the early 1980s have cathedral sculptures in storage at the museum been the subject of such in-depth research. The exhibition "Making Stones Speak. Notre Dame's Medieval Sculptures" vows to deepen our knowledge on these collections by revealing the findings of a major research and restoration programme, underway since 2022.

The curatorial team is spearheaded by Damien Berné, Head Curator at the Musée de Cluny and responsible for sculptures.

Born in Guadeloupe to a freed slave mother of African descent and a royal officer father, he was educated in Rouen and then Paris under the Ancien Régime, and enjoyed a brilliant official career; director of the Académie de France in Rome (1807-1816), elected member of the Institut in 1818, he was professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts from 1819. He was also a major collector and advisor to Lucien Bonaparte.

His output illustrates the career of an artist confronted with the upheavals of his era and the succession of regimes from the Revolution to the July Monarchy.

Most of his paintings and drawings are based on ancient history. He began his career in the triumph of Davidian neo-classicism, and his perseverance in this direction led to his discredit at the end of the 1820s, when the younger generation of Romantic artists gradually took over. Ancient heroism inspired him to paint two immense canvases, nearly eight meters long and now in the Louvre, Brutus Condemning His Sons to Death, completed in Rome in 1811, and The Death of Virginia (1828).

Lethière's most famous painting, Le Serment des ancêtres (Port-au-Prince, musée du Panthéon national haïtien), a manifesto against slavery and for the freedom of peoples, is featured prominently in the exhibition. Most of the works will be presented in Paris for the first time since the 19th century, and the new research carried out for both the exhibition and the catalog will make it possible to better understand the artist's work.

This exhibition is supported by the Cercle international du Louvre - American Friends of the Louvre and the Ford Foundation.

An innovative and immersive exhibition

This exhibition will immerge the visitors in the department stores' atmosphere through an immersive scenography, which will recreate these consumption temples' sensory and appealing experience. 
It will display an international overview of their monumental architectures with never seen before collections. The department stores' saga will also be the set of an interactive and playful experience, thanks to devices designed for families.

Curatorship

Isabelle Marquette, heritage curator, 
Elvira Férault, conservation assistant, Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine,
 

Associate Curator

Christelle Lecoeur, architect, teacher-researcher at ENSA Paris-Malaquais (ACS)

• Curatorial Assistant

  Anjali Pasquion Somaradjalou, research officer, Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine