About Jeu de Paume

Jeu de Paume has gained an international reputation as an art center that exhibits and promotes all forms of mechanical and electronic imagery (photography, cinema, video, installation, online creation, etc.) from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It produces and coproduces exhibitions but also organises film programs, symposiums and seminars, as well as educational activities. Jeu de Paume also publishes a number of art publications each year. With its high profile exhibitions of established, less-known and emerging artists, this venue ties together different narrative strands, mixing the historic and the contemporary.

Renowned artists (Richard Avedon, Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand, Philippe Halsman, Luigi Ghirri, Sally Mann…) and up-and-coming talents (Omer Fast, Oscar Muñoz, Helena Almeida, Ali Cherri…) share the stage, attracting an increasingly wide and diverse audience.

Since 2007, Jeu de Paume has been working to develop its Internet presence and has been experimenting by developing a dedicated “Online Creation Space” with a program of special web-based projects and thematic shows entrusted to curators specialising in the digital arts.

Film cycles are devised to accompany many of the exhibitions, or simply to pay tribute to major figures of the independent film-making scene in France and abroad. Specialising in documentary, experimental, art-house film and autobiography, with an emphasis on previously unshown work, this program helps to create bridges between film-makers and artists.

As the successor to the Magazine created in 2010, Jeu de Paume is launching Palm, a new bilingual (French and English) online version, in September 2021. Designed by a special committee around biannual dossiers devoted to historical and contemporary visual cultures.

Jeu de Paume aims to be a convivial place of discovery and exchange. The activities with the public and the documentary resources in the field of artistic and cultural education, the partnerships forged with associations in the social and medico-social field, the course cycles and training courses, as well as the proposals for families and young audiences, aim to explore the many dimensions of the image, both historical and contemporary. Jeu de Paume is committed to promoting access for all to its cultural programme and to supporting visitors with special needs in their encounters with the artworks.

All activities at Jeu de Paume are driven by an overriding desire to draw parallels and engage a dialogue between the various strands of visual culture and images, leading to a re-evaluation and reinvention of meaning in all fields of thought. Talks, seminars and symposia explore the questions and themes raised by the exhibitions, helping to open up new spaces for critical interaction.

In addition to its Paris premises on Place de la Concorde, Jeu de Paume has teamed up with the city of Tours to present heritage exhibitions highlighting donations made to the State and archive collections held by public and private institutions in France and abroad. Exhibited at the Château de Tours since 2010, this program also aims to reach out to new audiences in other regions of France.

In addition to these two venues, exhibitions organized by Jeu de Paume are presented throughout the world in collaboration, interaction and complicity with other national and international institutions with which it has elective affinities.

Jeu de Paume is an association under the law of 1901, subsidized by the French Ministry of Culture and supported by Manufacture Jaeger-LeCoultre, a privileged patron.
It is chaired by Alain Dominique Perrin and directed by Quentin Bajac.