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Jenny Holzer. I Saw

Photo : 2026 Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

Oct 20 – Feb 21

Jenny Holzer. I Saw

Words become light, dancing across the monumental architecture of this iconic museum to blur the lines between past and present. Step inside to discover a mesmerizing digital dialogue that pulses alongside historic canvases, turning your gallery stroll into a truly immersive trip. Whether you're an art buff or just curious, this interplay of technology and tradition offers a refreshing way to reconnect with timeless masterworks.

Musée d'Orsay (Paris 7th)

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The exhibition will take various forms, starting with light projections on the museum's facade, on the Seine side, during the inauguration week in October. The excerpts chosen by Holzer – ranging from artists' letters preserved in the museum's archives to literary or political writings contemporary to the period – will transform the building's exterior and offer passersby an immersive, almost timeless experience.

Inside, an LED installation designed specifically for the site, animated with colorful streams of text, will allow visitors to immerse themselves in content derived from the history represented in the museum's collections and in dialogue with it. This luminous work echoes the metamorphosis of the building, which went from a 19th-century railway station to a modern museum: a bespoke program traversing the space reflects the lively circulation of visitors and recalls the original function of the Gare d'Orsay.

Traversing a selection of works from the collections presented in the cupola rooms dedicated to history painting, naturalism, and symbolism, the LED installation will dialogue with Holzer's paintings created with gold, platinum, and palladium leaf. These paintings, where erasure and concealment become visible, change over the days according to the variations of light from the Seine. A large part of their content remains obscured, but traces of difficult and essential decisions persist, echoing the history paintings exhibited in the neighboring galleries.

The exhibition will also feature stone benches designed in dialogue with the museum's architecture and its permanent collections. Created especially for the occasion, these new sculptures, many of which are engraved with texts from the 1848–1914 period represented at the Musée d'Orsay, will be arranged in various spaces on the ground floor and in the galleries. The unusual hues of these benches respond to the remarkable diversity of the stones used in the museum's sculptures and plinths, in accordance with Gae Aulenti's initial project.

Together, the works presented inside and outside the museum bear witness to the inseparable intertwining of past and present, and the enduring bond that unites France and the United States.

Outdoor light projections for several evenings around the opening in October 2026 (dates to come).

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