5 LEGENDARY EXHIBITIONS AT THE HEART OF THE FONDATION LOUIS VUITTON

DAVID HOCKNEY 25 – IMMERSION IN 25 YEARS OF LEGENDARY ART


In the spring of 2025, the Fondation Louis Vuitton invited David Hockney, one of the most influential artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, to take over its entire exhibition space.

The artist traverses eras with a rare freedom; from pencil to charcoal, from collage to iPad, from painting to video. He adapts to the innovations of his time and transforms each medium into a form of expression.

It was a given, then, that the Fondation would offer him an exhibition worthy of his work and his mediums. For the occasion, the artist devoted himself personally, in collaboration with his partner and studio manager, Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima, to designing the experience, conceiving an immersive and interactive dive into the last 25 years of his creations – without forgetting his seminal works.

This exhibition was unprecedented in both content and scope, bringing together over 400 of his works, including loans from international, institutional and private collections in addition to works from a major collection from the artist’s studio and foundation. It is here, thanks to Hockney’s work but to also that of Suzanne Pagé, Artistic Director and Curator of the Fondation, that these works came together for the first time.

Featuring intimate portraits of his loved ones, his hugely famous California swimming pools, his Normandy landscapes and his interpretation of the blooming of spring, the Fondation set the stage for an exhibition in motion. A journey through the artist’s life, reminding us, as he likes to say, that “It’s the now that is eternal”.

MONET – MITCHELL – AN OPEN DIALOGUE WITH ART


In the autumn of 2022, the Fondation Louis Vuitton was privileged to bring together two exceptional artists – Claude Monet and Joan Mitchell – for an exhibition created in partnership with the Musée Marmottan Monet.

The destinies of Monet and Mitchell intersect several times but they truly come together in the sensitive expression of their emotions through their painting – this feeling that Mitchell claimed as the guiding principle of her work.

Through some sixty iconic works by the two artists, the exhibition created a dialogue between Claude Monet’s final period – notably the Water Lilies - and the vibrant paintings of Joan Mitchell, accompanied by a retrospective devoted to Mitchell, featuring around fifty paintings over 1,000 square metres.

At the heart of the Fondation, the paintings did not merely hang side by side, they listened and responded to one another. Twenty-five of Monet’s paintings – including the monumental “Agapanthus”, on show for the first time in Paris since 1956 – thirty-five pieces by Mitchell from the Grande Vallée series, a series that pulsated with emotion. In this silent but powerful exchange, where light, patterns and colors became the expression of a pictorial language, the Fondation Louis Vuitton played the role of interpreter, offering visitors the tools for a sensitive appreciation. A poetic dialogue enveloping visitors in a unique feeling: that of being simply in the right place at the right time.

BASQUIAT X WARHOL – FOUR-HANDED PAINTINGS


Following the success of the exhibition dedicated to Jean-Michel Basquiat in 2018, which drew more than 700,000 visitors, the Fondation Louis Vuitton continued to explore his work, focusing on his collaboration with Andy Warhol. From 5 April to 28 August 2023, the Fondation created a major exhibition, the largest ever devoted to these paintings produced by four hands.

Between 1984 and 1985, the two artists worked side by side. Warhol, encountering Basquiat’s ardor, rediscovered his love of painting. Basquiat saw in Warhol an elder who was able to speak a unique language, but one that was accessible to all. This is why the exhibition opened with crossover portraits: Basquiat by Warhol; Warhol by Basquiat. Then it presented eighty works created with four hands, alongside iconic pieces such as the boxing gloves photography series created by Michael Halsband for the poster for their 1985 exhibition .

At the same time, individual works by the two artists and by major figures from the 1980s New York scene – including Keith Haring, Michael Halsband and Jenny Holzer – were on display throughout the exhibition area to immerse visitors in the raw energy of the period.

Keith Haring spoke of their partnership as a “physical conversation happening in paint instead of words”. And it is true, given the enormity of their talents, that it would be easy to remain speechless.

CINDY SHERMAN – CROSSING VIEWS, A NEW TAKE ON ART


In 2020, and for the very first time in Europe, the artist and photographer Cindy Sherman saw the largest ever exhibition devoted to her work come to fruition.
And it was of course at the Fondation Louis Vuitton that this landmark event unfolded.

The new exhibition entitled “Crossing views” brought together some twenty French and international artists and around fifty works of art, most of them being exhibited for the first time. Through various media and approaches (painting, sculpture, photography, video and installation), the show revolved around the common thread of portraiture with an array of works from the 1960s to the present day. Here, portraiture was conceived as a space that enables the questioning of female and male archetypes, intimate and collective memory, social identity and the renewal of gender through social media.

BEING MODERN – MOMA AT THE FONDATION LOUIS VUITTON


When the Museum of Modern Art, the most famous New York museum, meets the Fondation Louis Vuitton, the resulting exhibition cannot be anything but exceptional. And it took place from 11 October 2017 to 5 March 2018 at the Fondation Louis Vuitton. This novel collaboration, curated by Glenn Lowry (Director of MoMA) and Suzanne Pagé, (Artistic Director of the Fondation), embodied a true commitment to art and to those that create it, including artists, conservators, curators, sponsors, etc. “Being Modern” was a manifesto, an invitation to rethink our relationship with modernity, through over 200 major works selected with care from MoMA collections.

Throughout the Fondation, the exhibition space retraced the history of modern and contemporary art through the six departments of the New York museum – from American abstract art to pop art, from minimalism to photography.

For five months, the Fondation provided a unique stage for expression between Cézanne and Klimt, Picasso and Matisse, Hopper and Kirchner. A selection of familiar masterpieces, sitting beside pieces that had never before been shown in France, including Andy Warhol’s “Campbell’s Soup Cans” (1962), “Tomb” by Philip Guston (1978), and “144 Lead Square” by Carl Andre (1969).

At the same time, like a silent echo, the MoMA archives retraced the history of a visionary museum, in an exhibition designed to bridge eras, arts and two committed institutions, namely MoMA and the Fondation Louis Vuitton, united by a common ambition of transmission, creation and modernity.