Brussels 1900, capital of Art Nouveau: 250 works at the Petit Palais in Paris, 10 November 2026 to 25 April 2027

The Petit Palais has built its reputation on exhibitions that treat a city as a single artistic organism, and from 10 November 2026 to 25 April 2027 it turns that method on Brussels. Bruxelles 1900, capitale de l’Art nouveau brings together more than 250 works — paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, posters, jewellery, photographs, architecture and graphic art — to show how the Belgian capital around 1900 worked without a hierarchy between the arts, and how far that attitude travelled.

The exhibition is built with three Belgian national institutions: the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, the Royal Museums of Art and History, and the Royal Library of Belgium. Its general curators are Géraldine David, Sara Lammens, Annick Lemoine and Kim Oosterlinck, directors of those institutions and of the Musée d’Orsay; the scientific curators are Anne-Charlotte Cathelineau, chief heritage curator for sculpture at the Petit Palais, Davy Depelchin of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, and Benjamin Foudral, director of the Musée Gustave Courbet.

For readers who follow Art Nouveau, the interest of a show on this scale is that Brussels is where the style was first built rather than drawn: Victor Horta’s houses, the furniture, the ironwork and the graphic design were produced in the same years and often for the same clients. Seeing the painting and the jewellery and the architectural drawings in one sequence is the argument the exhibition makes — that around 1900 the city did not separate a picture from a door handle.

Practical details

• When: 10 November 2026 to 25 April 2027
• Where: Petit Palais, Avenue Winston-Churchill, 75008 Paris, France
• Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 6pm (last entry 4.45pm); late opening until 8pm on Friday and Saturday (last entry 6.45pm)
• Admission: €17 full, €15 reduced; free for under-18s, jobseekers and visitors with disabilities
• Organised by: Petit Palais – Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris (Paris Musées), with the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, the Royal Museums of Art and History and the Royal Library of Belgium

Cultural Heritage Online lists this exhibition for readers who follow Art Nouveau and the European cities where it was made.