PARIS.- As the Musée Carnavalet - Histoire de Paris has just celebrated its 160th anniversary, the Parisian institution is presenting a new exhibition in the final room of its collection tour, dedicated to Paris from 1977 to the present day. Titled Nouveau Paris, it offers renewed perspectives on the capital’s recent history and explores the transformations that have shaped the lives of Parisians.

Featuring nearly thirty works from the museum’s collections, the exhibition—opening Friday, September 25—invites visitors to admire two exceptional donations: one from the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation and the other from JR. These artists have in common their lasting legacy on the contemporary history of the City of Light through their temporary installations.

It was, in fact, following the first election of the Mayor of Paris by its citizens in 1977 that public art projects gradually began to find their place. Christo and Jeanne-Claude were the pioneers in this field; they succeeded in obtaining permission from Jacques Chirac, then the city’s mayor, to create The Pont Neuf Wrapped in 1985.

Given the profound bond that united the artist couple with the French capital, the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation has donated an exceptional collection of fourteen works to the City of Paris and Paris Musées. Nouveau Paris will thus offer visitors the opportunity to discover the lithograph The Pont Neuf Wrapped, Paris, 1975–85, as well as excerpts from the documentary Christo in Paris by Albert and David Maysles.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s monumental projects have inspired a new generation of artists, and as such, JR is now considered one of the leading figures in public art. Last June, his tribute to the artist couple, La Caverne du Pont Neuf, was viewed by 6.4 million people, and JR has chosen to entrust a unique and mysterious legacy of his artwork to the Musée Carnavalet.

At the heart of Nouveau Paris, visitors will be able to try to unravel the mystery of the time capsule of La Caverne du Pont Neuf. Made of zinc, the iconic material of Parisian roofs, this box is entirely paper-mounted to both adorn and seal it. Inside, JR has chosen to place objects and productions whose nature is known only to him. All bear witness to the epic journey of this project and will not be revealed to the public until 2046, as per the artist’s wish. It will therefore be twenty years before the Carnavalet Museum opens this enigmatic time capsule.





“Paris is the world capital of culture; art is everywhere—in our streets and in our museums. With the artworks of Christo and Jeanne-Claude and JR, two stories that have left a lasting impression on Parisians are now joining the collections of Paris Musées, accessible free of charge to everyone,” says Emmanuel Grégoire, Mayor of Paris. “That is exactly the role of our museums: to keep the memory of our city alive,” he concludes.

Alongside the artworks by Christo and JR, several of the museum’s recent acquisitions will also highlight the urban transformations of Paris and how citizens have embraced them, notably through works by Vera Röhm, Nathalie Gautier-Hartog, Caroline Bouyer, Sylvie Sandjian, Frédéric Chaume, Geoffrey James, and Jean-Claude Gautrand.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude were born on the same day: June 13, 1935; he in Gabrovo, Bulgaria, and she in Casablanca, Morocco. Jeanne-Claude passed away in 2009, and Christo died in 2020, both in New York City, where they had moved in 1964.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude realized monumental projects around the world, including Wrapped Coast, One Million Square Feet, Little Bay, Sydney, 1968–69; Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin Counties, California, 1972–76; Surrounded Islands, Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, Florida, 1980–83; The Pont Neuf Wrapped, Paris, 1975–85; The Umbrellas, Japan–USA, 1984–91; Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin, 1971–95; The Gates, Central Park, New York City, 1979–2005; The Floating Piers, Lake Iseo, Italy, 2014–16; The London Mastaba, Serpentine Lake, Hyde Park, 2016–18; and L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped, Paris, 1961–2021.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude worked together since their first outdoor temporary work of art: Stacked Oil Barrels and Dockside Packages, Cologne Harbor, Germany, 1961. Before he escaped to the West, Christo studied painting, sculpture, architecture, and decorative arts at the National Academy of Art in Sofia for four years.

All early works, such as Wrapped Cans, Wrapped Oil Barrels, Packages, Wrapped Objects, and Store Fronts, as well as all preparatory drawings, collages, and scale models are works by Christo only. All public projects and indoor installations, both realized and unrealized, are collaborative works by Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude met in Paris in 1958, and three monumental works marked their special relationship with the French capital: Wall of Oil Barrels - The Iron Curtain, Rue Visconti, Paris, 1961–62; The Pont Neuf Wrapped, Paris, 1975–85; and L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped, Paris, 1961–2021.

This last project was realized posthumously under the direction of Vladimir Yavachev, nephew and director of projects of Christo and Jeanne-Claude. During its sixteen-day presentation to the public, it attracted 6 million visitors, while 685 million people - one-twelfth of the world's population - experienced it via the media and social networks. Tourism to Paris also increased by 19.3% during the presentation.

Through his monumental artworks, JR invites passers-by to question and reconsider their preconceptions. After his first project, Portrait d’une Génération (2004–06), which challenged the stereotypes surrounding youth from Parisian suburbs, his scope of action expanded rapidly.

He pasted portraits of Israelis and Palestinians on both sides of the separation wall (2007), the eyes of women on train cars in Kibera, Kenya (2009), and erected a giant child gazing across the border between the United States and Mexico (2017). These unusually large-scale installations share the same mission: to amplify the voices of ordinary people and spark dialogue.

JR’s artistic approach is both humanistic and unifying. From creating a trompe-l’œil at the Louvre with 400 volunteers (2019) to organizing a pasting project with incarcerated men in a maximum-security prison in California (2019), he strives to involve as many people as possible, with the goal of fostering mutual understanding and contributing to societal change.

His global participatory art project Inside Out has already enabled more than 600,000 people to express themselves through large-scale black-and-white portraits.

JR’s projects explore a variety of media and artistic practices. Among his most notable achievements: a performance involving 154 dancers on a thirty-meter-high scaffolding at the Palais Garnier in Paris (2023), the Oscar-nominated documentary Visages, Villages, co-directed with Agnès Varda (2017), and a video mural examining the issue of firearms in American society, featured on the cover of Time magazine (2018).

He also creates works exhibited worldwide, including at the Venice Biennale (2022), the Brooklyn Museum (2019), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2019), and the NGV Triennial (2020).

JR is represented by Perrotin, Galleria Continua, PACE, and Nara Roesler.