5 exhibitions honoring women in Paris right now From painting to photography, women artists are taking center stage in Parisian museums with exhibitions not to be missed
Between wet dreams and viral aesthetics
This is the Californian artist’s first solo show in Paris, titled Glass Slipper. Following her initial appearance in the group show Ré-enchantement in Pantin, Ariana Papademetropoulos now fully occupies the space at Thaddaeus Ropac gallery with an immersive environment that has gone viral on social media.
At the center of the room stands an aquarium. Visitors can lie down inside, as if in a therapeutic installation -Water Based Treatment. A kind of coffin, almost reminiscent of Snow White’s, it simultaneously confines and protects. Water becomes a central motif, enveloping and hypnotic, while opposing elements -lava, fire- appear in small touches, suggesting latent threats. Between vaporwave aesthetics and a fascination with the domestic, the artist creates a floating, dreamlike space.
Note: A conversation between Ariana Papademetropoulos and Mark Alizart will take place on Saturday, March 28, from 6 PM to 8 PM at the gallery.
Until April 11, 2026 at the Thaddaeus Ropac gallery
Representing women and fashion in the 18th century
In the heart of Le Marais, the Musée Cognacq-Jay offers a historical, exclusively female-focused interlude. The exhibition explores representations of women during the Enlightenment, a pivotal moment when the bourgeoisie rose and the aristocracy intensified efforts to distinguish itself. In this context, fashion became a full-fledged social language -often the first expenditure for the elite, even before furniture or food. Portraits proliferate, with particular attention to fabrics, silk gauzes, and lace.
Paintings, bucolic and pastoral scenes, interact with period textiles. The exhibition also highlights the first influencers of the 18th century: fashion merchants who guided clients’ and artisans’ choices. Among them, Mademoiselle Bertin, the so-called “minister of fashion.” A special touch: contemporary counterpoints punctuate the galleries, including a delightfully kitsch soup tureen by Cindy Sherman.
Until September 25, 2026 at the Cognacq-Jay museum
Intimacy magnified on a grand scale
Rather than displaying her photographs in a conventional way, Nan Goldin presents her videos and slideshows ; “films made of photographs,” as she calls them. After stops in Stockholm, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Milan, the exhibition comes to Paris, occupying both the Grand Palais and the Chapelle Saint-Louis at La Salpêtrière. A dual venue for a fully immersive experience into her intimate work.
Through six major works, Goldin traverses five decades of creation, addressing universal themes such as childhood, gender, violence, and addiction. A retrospective as much to experience as to view, it engages the body as much as the eye.
Until June 21, 2026 at Le Grand Palais
Witches, chimeras, and visions of another world
A key figure of Surrealism, Leonora Carrington is the focus of a large-scale exhibition unprecedented in France. The 20th-century English artist, whose life was marked by travel -from Europe to the United States and Mexico- built a body of work steeped in esotericism, metamorphoses, and hybrid worlds.
With 126 works on display, the exhibition draws inspiration from her famous Map of the Human Animal to unfold a universe where boundaries blur: between female and male, human and animal, real and imaginary. A visionary, Carrington anticipated feminist and ecological concerns long before they became widely recognized.
Until July 19, 2026 at the Luxemburg Museum
From fashion to the front: the path of a fearless photographer
The Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, in collaboration with the Tate Britain, presents a retrospective of Lee Miller. Photographer, muse, and war correspondent, her work defies categorization. The exhibition traces her entire trajectory, from fashion photography to portraits and landscapes, up to her wartime reports. In 1945, she documented the horrors of concentration camps, producing images among the most powerful of the 20th century. Like Leonora Carrington, her life was defined by constant movement -New York, Cairo, London- fueling a poetic and deeply intrepid body of work.
Until August 2, 2026 at the Modern Art Museum
If these exhibitions reflect greater visibility for women artists in Parisian institutions, they also remind us that this recognition comes after a long-standing imbalance. As early as the 1980s, the collective Guerrilla Girls had already denounced, with statistics, the underrepresentation of women in museums and public collections. Forty years later, while progress is being made, questions of legitimacy, space, and memory remain. These exhibitions offer both a celebration and an ongoing corrective in the art world.
