Summer of Exhibitions: France's Regions Invite Visitors on an Art Journey

Paris – 12 July 2026: France’s cultural summer is not confined to the space between the Seine and the boulevards. A current selection by Franceinfo brings together ten exhibitions in the regions that can turn a holiday into a small art journey. Behind it lies an idea as simple as it is appealing: those heading to the sea, the mountains or to visit relatives need not miss out on major works, idiosyncratic collections and intelligent contemporary art.

In Nantes, for example, the Hab Galerie is presenting the exhibition “Interstellar” as part of the Voyage a Nantes. Around twenty artists from the visual arts, photography, video and design set out their visions of a newly imagined Earth. It is a programme that does not mistake summer lightness for a lack of thought: landscape emerges as a question of the future, a repository of memory and a place where technology, ecology and imagination meet.

At the same time, the Musée d’arts de Nantes is presenting, until 30 August, an exhibition drawing on the city’s own public collections. Meteorites from the natural history museum, loans from the Musée Jules-Verne and precious holdings from the city library enter into dialogue with contemporary positions. This very mix is what makes regional institutions so appealing: they do not always have to aim for the next blockbuster because they know their treasures.

Further north, the Musée de Picardie in Amiens is inviting visitors, until 27 September, to view French drawings from private collections. Names such as Nicolas Poussin, Antoine Watteau, Jean-Honore Fragonard and Jacques-Louis David promise no fashionable surprise, but rather an encounter with art history’s most concentrated medium. Drawing reveals the thought before it puts on its socially acceptable attire, the first breath of an image idea.

Chateau de Chantilly also offers a remarkable historical constellation this summer. The exhibition on Caroline Murat, Napoleon’s sister and Queen of Naples, traces, until 4 October, the paths of artworks and collections between Naples and Chantilly. Such exhibitions tell not only of taste, but also of power, mobility and the long biographies of objects that often seem all too silent in museum display cases.

The particular gain offered by this summer map lies in its diversity. Alongside painting and drawing are photography, design, natural history and political image history; alongside major names appear local archives and unusual loans. Those travelling through France in the coming weeks can therefore see the pauses between the beach, the market and dinner as an invitation to open a museum door. Behind it, there may await nothing less than another way of seeing the region.