Convoquer les Chimères: our photos of the exhibition combining contemporary and medieval art at the Musée de Cluny

Whencontemporary art and medievalism meet... The Musée de Cluny - Musée national du Moyen Âge is hosting the exhibition Convoquer les Chimères. Héritage médiéval dans l'art contemporain in its permanent collections, from March 25 to July 20, 2025. As part of the Berserk & Pyrrhia program, this exhibition proposes a dialogue between medieval art and contemporary creation, through a selection of hybrid works that question fantastic representations stemming from the medieval imagination. A proposal soberly constructed around figures between the visible and the invisible.

Curated by Rémi Enguehard (Frac Île-de-France) and Michel Huynh (Musée de Cluny), this exhibition brings together some fifteen works from the Frac Île-de-France collection and those of several contemporary artists. Their animal, vegetable and hybrid forms are reminiscent of chimeras, emblematic creatures of medieval wonder, in a contemporary treatment that takes up ancient motifs in an updated form.

• To be read
• The Musée de Cluny, Paris' museum of the Middle Ages, its program and age-old treasures
• Berserk & Pyrrhia - Contemporary art and medieval art: the Frac Île-de-France exhibition
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These works also question the social, religious and playful uses of medieval objects. The project is an anthropological exploration of the Middle Ages, nourished by fiction and emotion, tackling a variety of themes such as belief, love and play. " Their fantastical universes are a direct legacy of the medieval taste for hybrid and marvelous figures that populate our heroic fantasy-tinged imaginations," explains a museum press release.

The exhibition brings together works by Jacopo Belloni, Corentin Darré, Erik Dietman, Frederik Exner, Richard Fauguet, Alison Flora, Diego Giacometti, Youri Johnson, Lou le Forban, Marion Verboom and Xolo Cuintle. It is part of a wider program, " Berserk & Pyrrhia ", dedicated to the relationship between contemporary and ancient art, under the general curatorship of Céline Poulin, Director of the Frac Île-de-France.

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