It was our last night in Paris, and I had nothing on the itinerary. We knew the ballet was sold out. It had been for months before we even arrived. We looked at other shows, but nothing really sparked our interest. Then my daughter discovered that there was a Matisse exhibit just down the street at the Grand Palais.
We had walked past the Grand Palais several times during our visit, but I hadn’t even thought about the exhibit. It was open until 8:00 p.m., which gave us just enough time to see it and then have one last dinner in Paris. Sometimes the best experiences are the ones that weren’t on the itinerary at all.
The Grand Palais itself is a historic and beautiful building. It opened in 1900 as one of the major venues of the World’s Fair and has hosted an extraordinary range of cultural, artistic, and sporting events over the years.
It was at the center of the 1924 Olympic Games as the site of the “Art et Sport des Olympiades de Paris.” These competitions were very different from the Olympics we know today, with medals awarded not only for athletic achievement but also for sculpture, painting, literature, music, and architecture.
A century later, the Grand Palais again became part of the Olympic Games when Paris hosted the 2024 Olympics and Paralympics. This time, the building hosted fencing, wheelchair fencing, taekwondo, and para taekwondo. The Tour de France even rode through the Grand Palais in 2017.
But the building’s history hasn’t always been about celebration. During World War I, the Grand Palais served as a military hospital. During the German occupation in World War II, it was used as a military truck depot and as a venue for exhibitions promoting the German vision of Europe under Nazi rule. With the liberation of Paris In 1944, the Germans set off explosives, engulfing the building in flames.
And yet, it survived.
A major restoration brought the Grand Palais back to life. In 1966, it hosted an exhibition celebrating Pablo Picasso’s 85th birthday, alongside the Petit Palais. In 2021, the building entered another massive restoration project. When we visited, only a portion of the Grand Palais was accessible because much of the building was being prepared for an upcoming event. Even so, what we saw was stunning.
There was something fitting about seeing the Grand Palais in this state of renewal. This is a building that has continually changed with the times, survived destruction, been restored, and found new purposes. It has been a hospital, an Olympic venue, an exhibition hall, a military depot, and now, once again, a place where art and culture bring people together.
One interesting and somewhat controversial addition to the area is the sculpture just east of the Grand Palais. It seems almost out of place in this historic setting between the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais. It is Jeff Koons’ Bouquet of Tulips. The sculpture was originally commissioned in 2015 by then-U.S. Ambassador to France Jane Hartley as a gift to Paris in the aftermath of a series of terrorist attacks across France. Installation didn’t begin until 2019, after three years of debate, political wrangling, and a change in location.
Even if I were a fan of Mr. Koons’ work, I have to admit that the Parisians had a point. This is the kind of gift where you politely thank the giver and then stash it in a box in a drawer.
But back to the reason we were there: Matisse: 1941 to 1954.
The exhibit followed Henri Matisse’s work through the final years of his life, beginning after significant health problems had changed both his circumstances and the way he worked. As he became less able to paint in the traditional way, he turned increasingly to cut-out gouaches, which he arranged into different patterns, creating a more modern style with his characteristic bright colors and bold shapes.
The exhibit was arranged chronologically, allowing us to see this evolution unfold. Rather than simply looking at the work of an artist near the end of his career, we were watching an artist continually reinvent himself.
Matisse was 80 when he wrote a quotation that appeared on a wall toward the end of the exhibit:
There is something particularly powerful about those words coming from an 80-year-old man who had already lived through so much. Matisse wasn’t talking about age as a number. He was talking about remaining open to life, to curiosity, creativity, and change.
And perhaps that is why the quotation felt so appropriate in the Grand Palais. The building has seen more than a century of history. It has celebrated, suffered, burned, been restored, and reinvented itself. It continues to find new ways to welcome people and new reasons for them to walk through its doors.
Matisse found a new way to make art when the old way was no longer possible, and the Grand Palais has repeatedly found new life when circumstances demanded it.
On our last night in Paris, we had gone looking for something to do and stumbled into an exhibition that turned out to be about much more than Matisse. How fitting that it was held at the Grand Palais, a place that has seen so much change and has adapted throughout the years.
