Arts visuels
“Sorcières”: a new lecture of History at the Château des Ducs
If you thought witches are only good for scaring children in Grimm tales or making brooms fly in Harry Potter, it is time to review your classics. Until June 28, 2026, the Château des Ducs de Bretagne in Nantes invites us to a dizzying dive into one of the darkest and most fascinating periods of Read more
Sovereign Women in History and Art: An Eternal Ideological Stake
From Cleopatra to Elizabeth I, from Mary Stuart to Marie Antoinette, the names of great sovereign women evoke powerful myths of grandeur, beauty, and tragedy that nourish our imagination. But what remains of reality behind these narratives? Did Marie Antoinette really say, “Let them eat cake”? Was Cleopatra truly the most beautiful woman of the Read more
Strike at the Louvre
Strikers protesting for better work conditions, higher wages and more workers, and against the obsolescence of the building and the LNR Project (© LeParisien LP/Ahmed Benazzouz) On Monday, February 16, an assembly of more than 200 employees of the Louvre Museum voted to go on strike, making it impossible to fully open the museum. Launched Read more
European Painting Confronted with the Transition from Polytheism to Monotheism
For centuries, Europe lived surrounded by visible gods. They had bodies, faces, stories, tempers, desires, and a profoundly human dimension. They inhabited the walls of houses, public squares, temples, and frescoes. Then, gradually, this familiarity with the divine faded. Not through an immediate iconoclastic upheaval, but through a slow shift in which images more than Read more
Culture 3.0: Towards a New Financial Structure for Cultural Institutions
Beeple (Mike Winkelmann), Everydays: The First 5000 Days, 2021. NFT. ©Beeple From Speculation to Infrastructure: The Genesis of a Regulated Cultural Web 3.0 The year 2021 was marked by a sudden and unprecedented explosion in the field of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). This period was characterized by a level of speculative euphoria that remains difficult to Read more
Édouard Manet tried to warn us about the male gaze
We often come across the expression male gaze on the internet and in the media. It refers to the act, in arts, of depicting women and the world from a heterosexual male perspective. This perspective represents women as sexual objects, for the pleasure of the heterosexual male audience. The concept of male gaze was first articulated by the British Read more
Blood antiquities: The complicity of western museums in the Syrian conflict
When we think of war, we think about destruction. However, there is often a silent war against memory. The conflict that ravages Syria since 2011 has not only tragically displaced and killed millions, but has also erased a good part of Syrian’s historical heritage, that is to say the cradle of civilization. This allowed the Read more
The Louvre heist: how 7 minutes shook the world of cultural heritage
Thieves stole Empress Eugénie’s necklace from the Louvre in seven minutes, exposing critical security gaps. The theft shattered more than glass – it violated the artworks’ « aura » that Walter Benjamin described. These jewels are vessels of national memory; their loss erases pages from France’s material autobiography. The treasures will likely be disassembled, their provenance destroyed. Despite planned security upgrades, implementation failed. While technology like microtagging helps, true protection requires treating heritage as shared identity rather than power symbols. The empty display case reminds us that value lies not in carats, but in memory – making vigilance an act of collective care. Read more
Le Voyage en Hiver, much more than just a Christmas market!
Since last Saturday, the buildings of Nantes are shining, new sculptures have appeared in the streets and people are wandering from cottage to cottage with cups filled with mulled wineat Place Royale. It’s the beginning of the winter, and most importantly, the beginning of Le Voyage en Hiver (Winter’s journey)! In fact, this colourful and Read more
A paradoxe of writing : it disappears when we can understand it, and only appears once we face an unknown one
Writing, when it works, disappears into reading. — paraphrasing Roland Barthes thesis in The Degree zero of writing, 1953. When faced with a stele covered in hieroglyphs, an ancient Chinese manuscript, or a Linear A tablet, something happens. Writing lies before us, familiar in its materiality : lines, strokes, columns, engravings, yet utterly foreign. We read Read more