Our MAGMa students: International Managing art&cultural Heritage in Global Markets discover the Cité Internationale de la Langue Française

Visit of the Cité internationale de la langue française

Our MAGMa Managing Art&Cultural Heritage in Global Markets students discover the Cité Internationale de la langue Française!

A château dear to Francis I

The renown of the forest of Retz, in the Aisne, is not new.

In 632, Dagobert I was already hunting there! The kings who succeeded him also appreciated its abundance of game and had an unpretentious residence built there. The great history of the château only really begins with the future Francis I, who received the Duchy of Valois and the château from his cousin King Louis XII when he was only 3 years old!

In 1528, a few years after his heavy defeat at Pavia in Italy, the sovereign launched a series of building projects, from the Louvre, which he enlarged, to the Château de Fontainebleau, which he built. To indulge his favorite activity, hunting, a symbol of the elites, he erected a royal palace in the middle of the forest of Retz, the largest in France at the time. Villers-Cotterêts, then only a modest village, also had the advantage of being the geographic heart of the Duchy of Valois, the dynasty from which Francis I came.

The first permanent exhibition entirely devoted to the French language, the collection tour was designed under the scientific curatorship of Xavier North, Barbara Cassin, Zeev Gourarier and Hassane Kassi Kouyaté.

It relies on some sixty innovative mediation devices and precious objects, documents and works lent by about twenty national and international partner institutions (French Academy, National Center for Visual Arts, Comédie-Française, Louvre Museum, Army Museum, Mucem, National Education Museum, Guimet National Museum of Asian Arts, Tours Museum of Fine Arts, Quebec Museum of Civilization…).

The tour is also punctuated by contemporary artistic creations.

Visit of the Abbaye Saint-Jean-des-Vignes and the Musée de l’Arsenal Saint-Jean in Soissons.

Visit of the Centre de conservation et d’études archéologiques de Soissons with director Christophe Brouard

Visit of the Musée d’art et d’histoire de Soissons with director Christophe Brouard

This is the exhibition project of this first year of the MAGMa program on heritage. Students produce innovative proposals to rethink heritage and access to culture for the residents of Soissons.