Small Lives: Centre Pompidou's exhibition at the Panthéon

The exhibition Vies minuscules fills the Pantheon’s nave in Paris from 25 September 2026 to 31 January 2027. About thirty artists from the Centre Pompidou’s collections tell the stories of anonymous lives, with no extra ticket required.

Headed to the 5th arrondissement of Paris, under the Panthéon dome, where the Centre Pompidou and the Centre des monuments nationaux are staging Vies minuscules, from September 25, 2026 to January 31, 2027. We’ve pored over the program, and the contrast promises to be striking: in a monument devoted to the nation’s great men and women, it’s this time the quiet, fragile, or forgotten lives that will have their say. With this multidisciplinary exhibition, the CMN joins the Constellation of the Centre Pompidou, the initiative that disperses the museum’s collections during its renovation work.

The title springs from Pierre Michon’s 1984 Gallimard book, which gathers eight portraits of strangers, distant relatives, or fleeting encounters, from which the writer wove his own biography. By granting a place to lives that time typically consigns to oblivion, Michon gave them a poetic tomb. The exhibition picks up this thread and asks how art has learned to welcome lives relegated to the margins of grand history, for their part small, intimate, or infamous.

Which works should you see at the Tiny Lives exhibition?

Designed from the Centre Pompidou's collections, the exhibition brings together about thirty artists and spans more than a century of creation, from František Kupka to Jumana Manna. It features Christian Boltanski's installation Monument (1986), Mathieu Pernot's Photomatons series (1995-1997), two Teo Hernández films (Gabriel et André Robillard, Michel Nedjar, 1985), and Clarisse Hahn's sculpture Pierre (2015).

Nil Yalter, Adrianna Wallis, and Mohamed Bourouissa complete this journey that foregrounds the memory of the unnamed, exile, archives, and the traces of daily life. The scenography comprises thirty modules, one for each artist, conceived to converse with the venue’s monumental architecture and to guide the wandering. On paper, this is the kind of proposal that benefits from a slow viewing, late in the afternoon, as the light spills into the nave. We’ll be there at opening to see it for ourselves.

What programming is planned around Vies minuscules at the Panthéon?

The Panthéon supports the exhibition with a dynamic lineup that blends literature, music, dance, theatre, cinema, and performance:

Saturday, October 3, 2026 at 7:00 p.m.: A Tiny Night, featuring Nicolas Bouchaud reading Pierre Michon, and La Nòvia (SAND, Jacques Puech, Violoneuses). Online reservations to be announced
Saturday, October 10, 2026, from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m.: Letters to L., to G., to Mon Loup, Mom, Aunt L., Mr. and Mrs. Pinault, and to Us, by Adrianna Wallis. Online reservations to be announced
Date to be announced: The Nation's Children, by Sébastien Kheroufi, co-presented with the Festival d'Automne à Paris

What to know about the Panthéon

The visit is aligned with the monument’s hours: in September 2026, open from 10:00 to 18:30 (last entry at 17:45), then from October to January from 10:00 to 18:00 (last entry at 17:15). The exhibition is included in the Panthéon admission ticket, which grants access to the nave and the crypt. The individual price is €16 until September 30 (€13 on Wednesdays), then €13 from October 1, with a combined Basilique Saint-Denis + Panthéon ticket at €26. Entry is free for visitors under 16 accompanying an adult, for EU citizens aged 16–25, for people with disabilities and their companions, and on the first Sundays of November through March. An audio guide costs €4 and the individual guided tour €20.50. Tickets are available through the official ticketing site, and the monument remains accessible with the Passion monuments subscription. To extend the experience, an exhibition journal co-published by the Centre Pompidou and the Éditions du patrimoine gathers twenty works with curator commentary, excerpts from Pierre Michon and Vies rebelles by Saidiya Hartman, an interview with the writer, and a detachable poster, for €7 on site and in bookstores. Details are available on the Panthéon site.

This exhibition is aimed at both contemporary-art enthusiasts and heritage lovers, at teenagers looking for topics to debate, and at everyone who enjoys seeing a solemn space willing to be stirred up. A word of caution: the nave is vast and not particularly warm, so bundle up for winter visits, and the dome panorama remains closed for renovations. After the visit, Rue Soufflot, the Jardin du Luxembourg, and the Latin Quarter’s bookstores are just a short walk away.

Want more ideas for artistic outings? Check out our guide to the autumn 2026 exhibitions in Paris and Île-de-France, and the guide to the October 2026 exhibitions.