L’Art de Nîmes Exhibition

The exhibition in the IESA gallery from March 22 to April 6, 2023

The exhibition L’Art de Nîmes which will be held in the IESA gallery from March 22 to April 6, 2023 accompanies an important event of international scope: the City of Nîmes' application to have the Maison Carrée listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. The result will be announced in July 2023 and IESA fully intends to celebrate, as is fitting, the positive verdict of this application, of which we have no doubt!

L’Art de Nîmes is organized by Master’s Year 1 Old Master Art students, accompanied by David Brouzet, lead professor at IESA arts&culture. It is part of a 2022-2023 season dedicated by IESA to Provence and Languedoc[1].

The exhibition was made possible mainly through the loan of an important private collection never before shown to the public.

The museography will be organized around a plaster model of the Maison Carrée commissioned from the Lorenzi casting workshop specially for the exhibition.

Together, they will offer a general overview of the history and art history of Nîmes from the founding of ancient Nemausus to today.

An archaeology section will bear witness to the city’s prestigious Gallo-Roman origins. The Middle Ages will be evoked through documents relating to the "Knights of the Arena", members of the Nîmes nobility of the time. A rare copy of the Discours historial de l’antique et illustre cité de Nismes by the humanist Poldo d’Albénas will recall the central place the city held, during the Renaissance, in the birth of a national sense of heritage. For more recent periods, the presentation will include paintings (including a canvas by Reynaud Levieux, the "Poussin of Nîmes"), drawings and engraved views from the 18th century, photographs by Denis Rebord, posters and labels from Nîmes luxury hotels, where the bullfighters, true demigods, and their admirers would stay. In the field of decorative arts, pewter objects, silverware, ceramics and joinery furniture will show just how active a production center the seemingly discreet city was in the modern era. Who still knows, for example, that the first jeans were made in Nîmes?

The exhibition opening will be an opportunity to offer visitors a tasting of some local culinary specialties such as the petits pâtés de Nîmes, brandade de morue and Croquants Villaret, accompanied by a wine from the Costières de Nîmes.

The exhibition benefits from a partnership with the early music department of the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Paris for a series of concerts related to the exhibition’s theme, which will take place in the IESA gallery.

A puppet show will bring back to life the chanson de geste from the first half of the 12th century, the Charroi de Nîmes.

[1] It will be preceded, from March 6 to 20, 2023, by an exhibition, Praised Be Provence… and Languedoc! prepared by Bachelor Year 2 Art Market, Old Master Art students, on art in these two provinces in the 18th century.

The Maison Carrée in Nîmes

Emperor Antoninus Pius, modern marble and resin cast, private collection

Eared bowl, pewter, Nîmes, mid-18th century, private collection

Hubert Robert, The Maison Carrée, the Arenas, the Tour Magne, Paris, Louvre Museum

Jean-Luc Tamisier, presentation panel of the Maison Carrée

Educational issues

At a time when art and history museums in several cities are being renovated, starting with the musée Carnavalet Histoire de Paris, the musée Gadagne in Lyon and the Museon Arlaten in Arles, students will reflect on the specific issues of this type of institution and exhibition, whose interest today is clearly ethnographic as much as artistic.

Preparation for the exhibition will include a visit to the Louvre devoted to Hubert Robert’s paintings of the ancient monuments of Nîmes and Provence, and a visit to the Galerie Templon – Claude Viallat in Paris.

Working sessions will be led by specialists in the subject:

Isabelle Julia-Denis, chief curator, curator of the Charles-Joseph Natoire exhibition at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nîmes in 1977.

Yves Jammet, specialist in modern and contemporary art (the first on the École d’art de Nîmes and Pierre Bourdieu’s meeting with the students of this "threatened" school, the second on the "local" artists, Claude Viallat and "Supports Surface", Martial Raysse, Raymond Hains).

Jean-Luc Tamisier, scenographer and exhibition designer, author of scenographic and signage installations in the ancient monuments of Nîmes on behalf of Culturespaces in the years 2009-2015.

A study trip to Nîmes on November 29 and 30, 2022

A study trip to Nîmes on November 29 and 30, 2022 will allow students to visit the city’s emblematic monuments and meet museum curators, tourism professionals and municipal officials.

Study Trip Program

  • The Maison Carrée
  • The Musée de la Romanité and the Arènes
  • The Musée des Beaux-Arts (meeting with Pascal Trarieux, its curator)
  • The Old Nîmes Museum
  • The Jardins de la Fontaine and the Tour Magne
  • The restoration project for Hippolyte Flandrin’s paintings at the Église Saint-Paul
  • Subject to confirmation: reception in one of the finest private mansions of Nîmes (dating mainly from the late 18th century), the hôtel d’Aubais
  • The Carré d’Art
  • Subject to confirmation: the studio of visual artist Claude Viallat

Poldo d’Albenas, Historical Discourse on the Ancient and Illustrious City of Nîmes, private collection

The Monuments of the South of France, toile de Jouy, circa 1818, private collection