Image: musée des impressionnismes Giverny
The musée des impressionnismes Giverny will devote its summer 2026 exhibition to Daniel Buren, presenting 'Plantations': in situ works, 2026, from July 17 to November 1, 2026. The museum says Buren has been invited to take over its spaces with a new site-specific creation that extends from the gardens outside into the interior galleries, where it will be shown in dialogue with works from the collection.
Born in 1938, Buren is described by the museum as an internationally renowned French contemporary artist. The site explains that his in situ practice is built around his characteristic visual device of alternating white and coloured vertical bands, 8.7 cm thick, a format he has used since the late 1960s in works ranging from unauthorised poster interventions to large public commissions. The museum frames that approach as one that reveals and highlights places and their contexts through changes in viewpoint, colour, space, light and movement.
For 'Plantations', Buren’s intervention will be scattered around the landscapes of Giverny, where large coloured vistas tinged with blue, yellow, black, red and violet are set into the hill and gardens and continue into the rooms of the museum. The museum says the project creates a dialogue between the environment of Giverny and selected works from its own collection. It also places Buren in a line of reflection with Impressionist painters who were attentive to the changing effects of colour and light in nature, while noting that Buren shifts perception into the space the visitor actually moves through.
The exhibition is being mounted alongside the museum’s summer collection display, which will gather around 70 works across five thematic sections. According to the museum, paintings, sculptures, works on paper, photographs and decorative arts will be arranged around the themes of immersion, horizon, radiance, nuances and structure. The collection presentation is intended to place Impressionist masterpieces in conversation with contemporary art, and the museum says it does this annually as a way to revisit its holdings through new juxtapositions.
Among the artists named in the collection display are Pierre Bonnard, Gustave Caillebotte, Maude Maris, Eugène Boudin, Claude Monet, Hiramatsu Reiji, Theodore Earl Butler, Mary Wheeler, Maurice Denis, Johan Barthold Jongkind, Jean Francis Auburtin, Jacques Monory and others. The museum says the display will also include photographs, prints and sculptures that address the simplification of forms and the interplay of line and contrast in depictions of landscape and figure. Several recent acquisitions are included, underlining the museum’s note that the collection continues to grow through acquisitions, donations and long-term loans.
The exhibition is curated by Cyrille Sciama, director general and chief curator of the musée des impressionnismes Giverny, and Sylvie Patry, general curator of heritage at the Musée d’Orsay. Practical information listed by the museum gives opening days from July 17 to November 1, 2026, with an exceptional closure on Friday, September 4, 2026. Admission is listed at €12 full price and €9 concession, with audioguides available for €4 per person in French or English.
