20 October 2026 — 21 February 2027

Jenny Holzer: J’AI VU

Regarded as one of the most influential artists of our time, Jenny Holzer puts words and ideas at the centre of a deeply engaged and thought-provoking practice. For “J’AI VU”, conceived for and with the Musée d’Orsay, she draws text fragments from the museum’s archive and from the period covered by its collection, and distributes them across her signature media: monumental installations, projections onto the façade of the former railway station, inscriptions carved into stone benches and columns of variegated marble, and luminous electronic signs. The exhibition begins outdoors, with light projections on the museum’s Seine-side façade during the opening week (18–22 October 2026, from dusk, around 7 pm, until 11 pm). Excerpts chosen by Holzer – from artists’ letters held in the museum’s archive to contemporary literary and political commentary – transform the building’s exterior and offer passers-by an immersive experience, like stepping outside of time. Inside, a site-specific LED sign carries colourful streams of text drawn from, and responding to, the history represented in the Orsay collection. Running through four galleries – those devoted to history painting, naturalism and symbolism, as well as the Courbet room on the floor below – the illuminated work echoes the building’s transformation from 19th-century station to modern museum, its programmed flow mirroring the movement of visitors in a nod to the Gare d’Orsay’s original purpose. An artist-curated presentation fills the history painting gallery, rehung around the theme of war in the spirit of Holzer’s memorials and anti-memorials. Usually given over to religious, mythological, secular and political scenes, the room now focuses on conflict, combining war-related works from the collection, very varied in genre and subject, with a group of Holzer’s gold-, platinum- and palladium-leafed paintings about recent international wars. The exhibition also includes nineteen stone works – seventeen benches and two columns, the columns being a new type of sculpture for Holzer inspired by Orsay’s pedestals – set in dialogue with the museum’s architecture and permanent collection. Created especially for the occasion and installed throughout the galleries and ground-floor spaces, most are engraved with texts from the collection’s period (1848–1914). Their unusual colours respond to the remarkable variety of stone used for the museum’s sculptures and pedestals since it opened in 1986; the artist identified each type of stone and traced its origin to achieve an exact match. With more than 750 different texts taken from 424 sources and 73 authors, “J’AI VU” may be Holzer’s largest selection of texts for an exhibition to date. The result is a strikingly diverse body of late 19th- and early 20th-century writing on subjects including the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the 1871 Paris Commune, colonialism, activism, anarchism, labour and workers’ strikes, the military – notably conscription, hazing and corruption – Baron Haussmann and living conditions in Paris, art criticism and artists’ correspondence. This chorus of voices takes on particular force when projected at monumental scale onto the façade, carved into marble and granite or sent travelling through space as streams of light. By returning to the primary documents of the era represented in the collection, Holzer paints a portrait of a period through a multitude of voices, anecdotes and viewpoints. Curated by Sylvain Amic, President of the Musée d’Orsay and Musée de l’Orangerie (April 2024 – August 2025), and Nicolas Gausserand, Adviser to the President for international and contemporary affairs.

Musée d'Orsay