AUXERRE.- Since 2022, the City of Auxerre and Centre Pompidou have established a partnership to co-produce exhibitions based on a selection of modern and contemporary artworks from the Centre Pompidou collections, presented at the Abbaye Saint-Germain – Cité de la Parole et du Son, a major heritage site and a place for cultural exchange and creation.

With nearly sixteen centuries of history, the Abbaye Saint-Germain houses an exceptional ensemble of monastic buildings with diverse architectural styles, some of which also present the art and history collections of the Musée Saint-Germain.

From June 20 through November 1, 2026, following the Les Grands Récits festival (June 5–7), dedicated this year to the theme of the sea, Centre Pompidou anchors itself within the spaces of the abbey.

In a spirit of dialogue with the abbey’s architecture and collections, The Sea Is Your Mirror offers a profound immersion into the imaginary world of the sea through 20th- and 21st-century art.

Mysterious and ever-changing, the sea has long been an endless source of inspiration for artists. Elusive, it invites reverie. Calm or violent, it carries us while also resisting and overwhelming us.

Borrowing its title from Charles Baudelaire’s poem Man and the Sea, The Sea Is Your Mirror suggests that gazing upon the sea is also an act of self-reflection—an opportunity to meditate on human existence and the power of nature.

Whether inspired by mythical sea creatures, sirens, underwater life, or ecological concerns, the artists featured in the exhibition invite viewers into poetic, magical, and deeply reflective universes.

As part of the exhibition, artist Nicolas Floc’h has been invited to create a site-specific work for the chapter house. Composed of stained-glass installations using underwater photographs of the natural colors of the Yonne and Seine rivers, this work is drawn from his series The Color of Water and will enter the permanent collection of the abbey.





Artists featured in the exhibition:

Robert Delaunay • Man Ray • Jean Painlevé • Richard Stankiewicz • Jacques Monory • Gilles Aillaud • Peter Doig • Shimabuku • Nicolas Floc’h • Adel Abdessemed • Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec • Dove Allouche • Janaina Tschäpe • John Gerrard • Neri Oxman • Genaro Strobel • Korakrit Arunanondchai • Hicham Berrada

Five exhibitions have already been presented through this partnership since 2022:

• “The Centre Pompidou at Abbaye Saint-Germain” (2022)
• “Echoes, A Sonic Journey through Abbaye Saint-Germain” (2023)
• “Botany of Imaginaries” (2024)
• “Quest for Infinity” (2025)

The Sea Is Your Mirror is the fifth exhibition of this partnership and is part of the Constellation program launched by Centre Pompidou as part of its broader transformation.