On Saturday, May 23, 2026, the Albert-Kahn Departmental Museum participates in the new edition of the Nuit des musées and has put together a special program for this late-night event! It’s a chance to explore this site after dark, spending an evening in a garden-museum. If this name doesn’t ring a bell, this banker and philanthropist founded a project called the Archives of the Planet, and hired dozens of photographers from 1900 to 1931 to capture the jewels of the world. They produced more than 72,000 stunning color photographs, the autochromes, and about a hundred hours of video on 35 mm nitrate film.
Why are we telling you all this? Because this collection is housed in Boulogne-Billancourt, in the banker's former residence built by landscape architect Achille Duchêne! Here, the businessman thought big and commissioned the creation of 6 magnificent gardens representing the art of gardening. Covering more than 4 hectares, they include a French garden, a Japanese garden with its tea pavilion, an English garden, a Vosges forest, a blue forest with its central marsh and a golden forest with its birch trees.
The Albert Kahn Departmental Museum
Since April 2, 2022, visitors have been flocking back to the Albert Kahn Departmental Museum for its reopening after years of renovations. It's the perfect opportunity to explore the stunning new setting where the philanthropist’s collections are now on display. [Read more]
From May 23 to September 20, 2026
3rd edition of the Mondes en commun photographic festival
The Mondes en commun festival forges connections between the museum’s historic collections and contemporary photography. It is one of the institution’s scientific-cultural project axes: reactivating Albert Kahn’s work by showing its relevance to today’s global issues. The festival’s theme—“the visual inventory of the world”—invites a new reading of the Archives de la Planète’s photography and film collection; this audacious project aims, in Albert Kahn’s own words, to produce “a vast photographic inventory of the surface of the globe occupied and shaped by man, as it stood at the beginning of the 20th century.” The inventories also extend to the establishment’s plant collections, exploring living-world themes: fauna, flora, biodiversity, and more.
11 series of contemporary photography presented in the museum gardens
The festival will showcase photographic works that methodically aim to represent reality in all its diversity—near and far, macro and micro, the living and the inanimate. Thoughtfully tied to the museum’s collections, this new event will address the collection’s central themes such as human geography, cultural diversity, and biodiversity, as well as popular traditions and the natural and architectural heritage.
https://albert-kahn.hauts-de-seine.fr/la-programmation/festival
In his 1:1-scale body of work, Cédric Delsaux invites participants in his photographic series to strike a pose on a round, white pedestal.
Placed in the garden, the pedestal awaits you—it's your turn to be photographed as a visitor to the Albert Kahn Museum!
Accompanied by a mediator (link collection and ADLP project), the photographers present their series to the public in the museum garden. In keeping with the goal of continuing the inventory, the selected artists come from diverse backgrounds and each offers a series that resonates with the Archives of the Planet. Come meet them and discover their work.
In the presence of: Yasmina Benabderrhamane, Thierry Bouët, Cédric Delsaux, Laure Winants.
Departures every 30 minutes
Dive into a unique visual and sonic journey at the heart of the garden of the Albert-Kahn Departmental Museum. In front of the greenhouse, discover an exceptional screening that brings into conversation the historical images from the Archives of the Planet with photographs by ten contemporary artists featured in the Monde en Commun festival. A way to bring yesterday’s and today’s perspectives together, inviting us to question our relationship with the world.
To accompany this visual voyage, the duo Météo Trance will present an original musical creation. Their live performance, spanning ambient, jazz, and electronic music, will weave a poignant thread through these images whose aesthetics contrast with one another. A soundtrack conceived as a bridge between eras and imaginations.
### Météo Trance
Météo Trance is an electronic duo at the crossroads of ambient, experimental explorations, world music, and jazz. Their compositions blend synthetic textures with organic soundscapes, drawing on an unpredictable climatic palette. Using modular synthesizers, hybrid and traditional instruments, they forge sonic journeys toward the unknown.
Dates and Opening Time
On May 23, 2026
Location
Albert-Kahn Museum
2 Rue du Port
92100 Boulogne Billancourt
Prices
Free
Official website
albert-kahn.hauts-de-seine.fr
The Albert Kahn Departmental Museum
