Visionnaires - Ongoing

The exhibition Visionnaires (Visionaries) at the Petit Palais brings together a new body of work by Prune Nourry and a selection of her earlier sculptures that echo the museum’s holdings. Invited to take carte blanche, the artist conceived the project in response to a reflection, undertaken with the museum, on the importance of raising the profile of women artists in its collections. While women appear in the collections mostly as figures depicted – allegories or nude models – they account for only 4 percent of the artists, among them just four sculptors: Camille Claudel, Berthe Girardet, Sarah Bernhardt, and Hélène Bertaux. Bertaux is a particular inspiration for Nourry, both for her activism and for her sculpture Psyché, which is featured prominently in the exhibition. In 1881, she founded the Union des Femmes Peintres et Sculpteurs (Union of Women Painters and Sculptors) and campaigned tirelessly for women’s admission to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, which remained closed to them until 1897.