In January, Sam Szafran will be showing his wonderful paintings at Claude Bernard’s gallery starting on Wednesday January 17th until March 3, 7/9 rue des Beaux Arts. Olivier Saillard who has left Palais Galliera, will be producing an exhibition on Azzedine Alaïa‘s career on January 21, in the late designer’s gallery, 21 rue de la Verrerie. And on January 21, Georg Baselitz will be opening a show of his lifelong works at Fondation Beyeler in Basel to celebrate his 80 th birthday.  2018 looks like it will be an artistic year again in Parisdiary.

Johan Barthold Jongkind, Rue Notre-Dame, Paris, 1866, Rijksmuseum at Petit Palais

At Musée du Petit Palais, a show of ” Dutch painters in Paris” from 1789 to 1914 will start on February 6th. With over 1 million visitors in 2017, the Museum of art of the city of Paris, whose public collections are free entrance, has increased its frequentation by 30%. A great accolade to Christophe Leribault who multiplied the themes of exhibitions and his partnership with FIAC.

At Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Franco Algerian artist, Mohamed Bourouissa, will be opening a show on “Urban Riders”, on the 26 th of January. This is the story of Fletcher street, a camp for abandoned horses in the Philadelphia suburb of Strawberry Mansion, where Afro-American horsemen invite young people from the area to come and ride. The film “Horse day” will be shown with many photographs documenting it. This exhibition already took place at the Barnes Foundation and at the Stedelijk museum in Amsterdam.

Mohamed Bourouissa at Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris

And the great French painter, Jean Fautrier, will be the focus of “Matière et Lumière” a large retrospective of his work, the first since he died in 1964 (Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, until May 20).

At the Victoria and Albert museum in London, “Ocean Liners, Speed and Style” is a larger version of the exhibition which took place at the Peabody museum in Salem, MA, last summer. Don’t miss it, it is magical (February 3 to June 10).

Louis Rochefort, “The disaster to the Great Eastern State of the Grand Saloon during the gale”, about 1860 in the exhibition “Ocean Liners”.

There will be a major show of Grant Wood‘s paintings at the Whitney Museum of Art from March 2 to June 10th .

From March 28 onwards, l’Institut du Monde Arabe will show “l’Epopée du Canal de Suez”, the incredible adventure of the digging of the Suez Canal by Ferdinand de Lesseps and its history from the Pharaohs to the 21 st century.

Eugène Delacroix, “La Liberté guidant le peuple”, 28-7-1830, photo Angèle Dequier

On 29 March, will open at the Louvre a show of Delacroix‘s work in partnership with the Metropolitan Museum of Art.And at Louvre Lens, “The Empire of the roses” a show on Persian art from March 21 to July 22.

Attr. to Mihr Ali, Portrait of Fath Ali Shah © RMN-GP Hervé Lewandowski in the Persian art exhibition at Louvre Lens

In April, Grove Atlantic will publish the 30th anniversary edition of Charles Kaiser‘s ” 1968 in America”.  This book has been in print continuously since it was first published in 1988.  The 2018 edition features a new introduction by Hendrik Hertzberg, the veteran political writer for The New Yorker, as well as a new epilogue from Charles Kaiser to celebrate the 50 th anniversary of this major revolution in Europe and in the USA.

On April 7, at Centre National du Costume de Scène in Moulins, Charles Perrault’s fairy tales will be the focus of an exhibition of costumes and accessories.

“In color, Polychrome sculpture in France from 1850 to 1910” will be one of the lead exhibitions at Musée d’Orsay from June 11 to September 23 with wax, painted marble and multicolor marble works by Gérôme, Henry Cros, Jean Carriès and Gauguin.

Ernest Barrias, “Nature unveiling herself”, 1889, at Musée d’Orsay

At Musée Condé in Chantilly, on June 16 to October 14, “Painting the races, Stubbs, Géricault, Degas”. Where else but in the horse capital of France, could this exhibition take place? The Prix de Diane will run the next day on Sunday, June 17 th.

From 28-30 September, the Ryder Cup, golf’s most exciting professional team event, which takes place every two years between America and Europe since 1927, will be in Paris for the first time at Golf National. The event was launched by the two captains Jim Furyk for the US and Thomas Bjorn for Europe from the top of the Eiffel Tower where they played together, forty years after Arnold Palmer. They were wined and dined at Versailles and at the Elysée Palace where President Macron received them.

This is only the second time that the Ryder cup is being held in Continental Europe (Valderrama, Spain, was first) and to have it in France is a major event due to the persistance of the Ryder Cup committee run by Pascal Grizot. Let’s hope the European team wins! In 2022, it will be held in Rome.