The iconic Centre Pompidou in Paris will soon be closing its doors for major renovations until 2030, but travelers can still find ample art around Paris and throughout France to fill that artistic void. The “inside-out” building was designed to have its structural and air-circulation network on the outside (said to resemble a heart), and it’s now undergoing modernization to address long overdue infrastructure, accessibility, and technical issues. The design refresh by architects AIA, Moreau-Kusunoki, and Frida Escobedo will reinvent the museum to create a greater sense of flow and expansion within the galleries and spaces, while still respecting its original experimental soul.
The center’s off-site programming is robust: Many of Centre Pompidou’s works will be on view at other art venues and hubs across France, including the iconic Grand Palais. You can still catch Wolfgang Tillmans’s photographic exhibition at the Centre Pompidou proper until September 2025. And while the center undergoes the transformation, this is an opportunity to explore other destinations across the country offering multidimensional art spaces that invite you to play, wander, and feel.
You can choose your own adventure: Check out immersive installations while eating your way through Paris, head to Provence for optical illusions and seaside inspiration, or go to the Loire Valley, known as the garden of France, for sculptural landscapes that awaken your inner child.
Paris
Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Paris
Home to Paris’s most comprehensive modern art collection, MAM features exciting works by such major 20th-century artists as Chagall, Picasso, Modigliani, and Braque, plus emerging and contemporary artists. The museum is housed within a palatial structure from the 1930s and includes two versions of Matisse’s La Danse murals. From October 2025 to February 2026, the museum will feature work by Nigerian-born artist Otobong Nkanga, whose research and very layered work explore the close links among nature, ecology, and the body.
Palais de Tokyo, Paris
A raw, industrial temple to experimentation, Palais de Tokyo is the anti-museum hub of Paris. Palais de Tokyo offers workshops and affordable activities in efforts to improve accessibility in the arts. The institution is committed to shining a light on divergent artists and media that feel bold and pioneering. From Vivian Suter’s immersive and tropical Disco paintings to Thao Nguyen Phan’s haunting video-sculpture The Sun Falls Without a Sound, viewers are drawn into new worlds where the line between memory and dream blurs. Catch the Rammellzee retrospective showcasing the artist’s graffiti-inspired sculptures before it closes on September 7, 2025.
Grand Palais, Paris
The historic Grand Palais has long been a staple in France’s art scene for both classical and new-age exhibitions. Today, the museum successfully bridges old-school grandeur with more contemporary and modern sensibilities through provocative installations. Euphoria: Art Is in the Air, through September 7, 2025,is a playful exhibition where inflatables, color, and motion take over. And on view until September 21, Art Brut, coproduced with Centre Pompidou, elevates overlooked artists.
Provence
Fondation Vasarely, Aix-en-Provence
The Vasarely Foundation is home to Victor Vasarely’s legendary optical art works, and the building itself showcases geometric forms and colors across its facade. Go for the kaleidoscopic murals and illusions and stay for a dialogue with the art as you move around the space. The foundation is a multisensory ode to the hypnotic power of op art. Don’t miss his wife Claire Vasarely’s exhibition, A Life in Color, where her Bauhaus-meets-surreal-op-art-style tapestries will leave you daydreaming.
Loire Valley
The Domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire, Chaumont-sur-Loire
Overlooking the Loire River, the Domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire’s captivating International Garden Festival is on until November 2, 2025. Innovative landscape designers and visual artists create living, breathing artworks in conversation with nature. This year’s theme is “Once Upon a Time, in the Garden,” an invitation to experience these dreamlike gardens as they come alive with mystical serpents and ephemeral portals. Staying with the theme of flora and fauna, the château also spotlights generative artworks, like Miguel Chevalier’s poetic, luminous, and digital homage to Monet, Meta-Nature AI Quatre Saison.
The Frac Centre-Val de Loire, Orléans
Exploring the relationship between art, form, and architecture, the Frac in Orléans is a premier public collection devoted to contemporary architecture, sculpture, media, and art. The striking exterior of the building is playful and appears to come up out of the ground like a root. The Frac’s commitment to innovation and experimentation extends to the art within—check out André Bloc’s atypical yet harmonious works or Michael Hansmeyer’s full-scale 3D-printed grotto in an exhibit exploring transdisciplinary architectural possibilities.
The Foundation of Doubt, Blois
About 100 miles south of Paris, the Foundation of Doubt in Blois embodies the idea of being in flow and dissolving the boundaries between art and life. The museum features Ben Vautier’s famous Le Mur des Mots (The Wall of Words) and other artists of the Fluxus movement, which was meant to “promote a revolutionary flood and tide in art, promote living art, anti-art,” according to founder George Maciunas. This dynamic hub for digital, sound, and video art certainly challenges perceptions and blurs the lines between science, art, and technology. Astro-gastro nerds might especially enjoy Daniel Spoerri’s series of “eat art” works in the permanent collection, capturing zodiac-inspired dinner tables, where glasses and wine bottles feel like they could spill onto the gallery floors and walls.
