Installation | Tradition and Celebration across the Jewish Calendar
Fish-form Spice Container (Besamim), 1813, Vienna, silver, foil-backed glass, 8 × 34 × 7.6 cm, 450g
(New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2025.104)
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Riva Arnold describes the seven works in this installation from The Met’s Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts:
Tradition and Celebration across the Jewish Calendar
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on view until 3 March 2026
Tucked within the galleries of the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts (ESDA) is a special display of new acquisitions and objects that have never been on view before. The seven works in this temporary installation are part of a rotating exhibit of case studies organized by the department’s curators, fellows, and researchers. The current selection—on view until March 3, 2026—highlights craftsmanship, materials, and community celebrations from the Jewish populations of Austria, Italy, France, and the Netherlands between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Johannes van der Lely, Hanukkah Lamp, 1706, Leeuwarden, silver, 31 × 26 cm (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2025.585).
For over a decade, ESDA has been acquiring Judaica objects connected to Jewish life, culture, and religion. The selected items represent universal themes related to special days in the Jewish calendar, which follows a lunisolar cycle. This means that the days and months are based on the cycles of the moon, with each day beginning at sunset;[1] a leap month is added every few years to ensure that holidays are observed in their correct season. For example, Rosh Hashanah, associated with the new year, is celebrated in the fall, and Passover, associated with renewal, is in the spring.
Joyful holiday traditions and domestic milestones, such as the birth of a new baby or a wedding, kept communities together despite societal upheaval and economic fluctuations. Judaica produced in the Rococo or Baroque periods displayed extravagant decorative motifs typical of that era, with outstanding craftsmanship that evidences a material culture spanning metalwork, porcelain, leather, and enamel. . .
The full essay is available here»
Call for Papers | Imagining Britain
Thomas Gainsborough, Landscape with Sheep and Cattle on the Bank of a Stream, 1780–84, synthetic black chalk with stumping on wove paper, all four corners cut (London: Courtauld Gallery, Robert Clermont Witt, bequest, 1952).
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From The Courtauld:
Imagining Britain: Postgraduate and Early Career Research in British and Irish Art
The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 9 June 2026
Organized by Claire Ó Nualláin and Clara Shaw
Proposals due by 9 March 2026
In recent decades, a significant aspect of British art studies has involved reflection on the nature and boundaries of the field itself, debated critically and curatorially.
A decade on from the inaugural provocation of British Art Studies volume I, published in November 2015, in which art historians responded to the statement, “There’s No Such Thing as British Art,” the expansion of the field’s geographic and intellectual perspectives has opened new research avenues. Increasingly, scholars have recognised the possibilities afforded to the study of British art when it is brought into dialogue with the arts of regions which have hitherto been marginalised in its discussion, including Ireland and former colonial territories. This introspection has instigated a reexamination of British collections, with major rehangs including at Tate Britain and the Yale Center for British Art, encouraging fresh perspectives on canonical works of art and the emergence of lesser-known artists and histories from the archive. In 2025, the Courtauld Institute of Art announced the opening of the Manton Centre for British Art, a major new initiative in the field providing new contexts in which to explore the definition, scope, and even relevance of the concept of ‘British’ art.
In light of these exciting developments in the study of British and Irish art, we wish to announce a call for papers from postgraduate and early career researchers responding to the theme Imagining Britain. This student-led symposium aims to provide an interdisciplinary, cross-period forum for fruitful discussions interrogating the role of visual and material culture in reinforcing, challenging and complicating the notion of ‘British.’
We welcome proposals for fifteen to twenty-minute papers exploring any aspect of the visual histories of Britain and Ireland from medieval to the present day that address issues including, but not limited to:
• Reflections on the historiography of British and Irish art, and the influence of major collectors and institutions in constructing its canon
• Histories of state or monarchical deployment of art and material culture to construct or shape national identity
• Case studies of the role of art and visual culture in responding to questions of British identity, particularly from underrepresented perspectives
• Longue durée analysis of the development of British art
• Analyses of canonical works of British art from post-colonial and post-Imperial perspectives
Please send paper proposals (250–400 words) and a full CV to Claire Ó Nualláin c2400367@courtauld.ac.uk and Clara Shaw c2101718@courtauld.ac.uk. The deadline for applications is Monday, 9 March. Applicants will be informed about decisions by early April. Successful applicants will be encouraged, where possible, to use institutional funding they have available for travel and accommodation, as only minimal funding from the Courtauld will be available and this will be reserved for early career candidates and those without institutional support.
Supported by the CHASE Doctoral Training Partnership.
Symposium | Diplomatic Gifts
Today and tomorrow at the Villa Medici, from the conference programme:
Diplomatic Gifts in the Modern and Contemporary Periods
L’Académie de France à Rome, 2–3 March 2026
Organized by Alessandro Gallicchio, Valentina Hristova, and Natacha Pernac
Attributed to Bishandas, Jahangir Entertains Shah Abbas, from the St. Petersburg Album, ca. 1618 (Washington DC, Freer Gallery of Art).
On March 2–3, 2026, the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici will host an international symposium dedicated to diplomatic gifts in the modern and contemporary periods, examined in terms of their definitions, transformations, and processes of heritage-making on a global scale. These ‘ambassador objects’ will be studied in their material, political, and symbolic dimensions, as well as in their role in shaping international relations and ritualizing exchanges. Adopting polycentric perspectives, the conference encourages cross-views and bilateral or multilateral analysis of the sources.
Organizing Committee
• Alessandro Gallicchio, Director of the Department of Art History, Académie de France à Rome – Villa Médicis
• Valentina Hristova, senior lecturer in History of Modern Art, Université de Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens
• Natacha Pernac, senior lecturer in History of Modern Art, Université Paris-Nanterre
Scientific Committee
• Lucien Bély, professor emeritus of modern history, Paris, Sorbonne University, member of the Institut, Académie des sciences morales et politiques
• Francesco Freddolini, Associate professor of modern art history, Rome, Sapienza – University of Rome
• Serge Gruzinski, Director Emeritus of Historical Research, Paris, CNRS / EHESS
• Guido Guerzoni, historian and economist, Milan, Luigi Bocconi University
• Mei Mei Rado, assistant professor of Textile and Dress History, New York, Bard Graduate Center
m o n d a y , 2 m a r c h
9:00 Accueil
9.30 Ouverture — Sam Stourdzé et Alessandro Gallicchio (Académie de France à Rome – Villa Médicis)
Introduction — Valentina Hristova (Université de Picardie Jules-Verne, Amiens) et Natacha Pernac (Université Paris-Nanterre)
10.00 Les Définitions en Question
Présidence de session: Valentina Hristova
• Sur les dons (réels ou imaginaires) d’Uzun Hasan à l’État vénitien — Matthew Gillman (Columbia University, NY)
• Une collection des tranchées: Les œuvres découvertes par l’Armée française d’Orient au Louvre. Don diplomatique
ou butin de guerre? — Violette Gautier (Université de Picardie Jules-Verne, Amiens)
• Between Transnational Production and Cultural Diplomacy: Making and Managing Chinese Gardens Overseas — Zeming Taro Cai (University of Toronto)
11.30 Pause café
11.45 Récits Croisés, Sources et Représentations en Regard
Présidence de session: Francesco Freddolini
• Les cadeaux diplomatiques entre Empire ottoman et souverains occidentaux au XVIe siècle. Peut-on parler de réciprocité? — Frédéric Hitzel (EHESS, CETOBaC, Paris)
• The Geography of Diplomatic Gifts: Gift Giving and the Diverse Gift Profiles of State Ambassadors in 18th-Century Ottoman Diplomatic Ceremonial — Hümeyra Şahin Oktay (İstanbul Üniversitesi / Tobb Üniversitesi, Ankara)
12.40 Pause déjeuner
14.15 Les Vies de l’Objet: Fabrication, Reception, Display
Présidence de session: Guido Guerzoni
• « Que lui avions-nous apporté ? » : Les déboires des cadeaux diplomatiques du Portugal au souverain éthiopien Lebna Dengel, 1515–20 — Alain Mathilde (Université de Grenoble Alpes)
• Versailles et le monde: Les présents de Louis XV, 1715–74 — Marie-Laure Buku Pongo (Frick Collection, NY)
• Crafting Diplomacy: Extraordinary Embassies’ Visits to the Gobelins Manufacture and the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne, 1662–1789 — Barbara Lasic (Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Londres)
15.45 Pause café
16.00 Les Vies de l’Objet: Patrimonialisation
Présidence de session: Natacha Pernac
• Représentation et patrimonialisation des visites et dons diplomatiques en un haut lieu militaire, de l’Hôtel des Invalides au musée de l’Armée, 1675–2025 — Sylvie Le Ray-Burimi (Musée de l’Armée, Paris)
• The Qing Empire’s Gift to the Permanent Court of Arbitration: Transforming the Logic of Gift-Giving in Late Qing Diplomacy, 1907–11 — Yuxuan Zhou (Université de Genève)
• Le musée Senghor, une vitrine de la diplomatie culturelle du Sénégal, 1960–80 — Mohamadou M. Dieye (Musée d’art africain Théodore Monod, École doctorale ETHOS, Dakar)
17.30 Pause café
17.45 Special Lecture
• French Diplomatic Gifts in the Shaping of Qing Imperial Arts during the Long 18th Century — Mei Mei Rado (Bard Graduate Center, NY)
t u e s d a y , 3 m a r c h
9.00 Accueil
9.30 Stratégies et Politique des Dons Diplomatiques (Temps Long / Sérialité)
Présidence de session: Lucien Bély
• Entre jeux d’échelles et variété des typologies: Les cadeaux diplomatiques des Médicis et des Este au second Cinquecento — André Rocco (Université de Liège)
• Les dons cycliques de « pietra dura » entre l’Inde et l’Italie, 1620–2020: Entre charge historique et enjeux de supériorité — Lola Cindric (EHESS, Paris)
• Giulio Rospigliosi and Pascual de Aragón: The Role of Gifts in Relations between Madrid and Rome and Their American Projection — Carrio Invernizzi Diana (UNED, Madrid)
• Dono Dedimus Sacrum Corpus Christi Martyris, Corpisanti as Diplomatic Gifts from the Holy See to Mexico, 1833–60 — Montserrat A. Báez Hernández (Università di Teramo, KU Leuven)
11:45 Pause café
12:00 Special Lecture
• Du Japon à Madrid via México: Mondialisation, chocs des cultures et dons diplomatiques au sein de la Monarchie catholique, 1580–1640 — Serge Gruzinski (CNRS, EHESS, Paris)
12.45 Pause déjeuner
New Book | The Atlas of World Embroidery
From Princeton UP:
Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood, The Atlas of World Embroidery: A Global Exploration of Heritage and Styles (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2026), 400 pages, ISBN: 978-0691261911, £50 / $60.
A richly illustrated history of embroidery and needlework, showcasing the glorious range of styles, motifs, and materials used around the world.
Embroidery is one of the world’s most widely shared forms of creative expression—and one of its most varied and diverse. It can be found in every region, yet its visual languages, themes, and techniques vary greatly: some are marked by unique styles and others show influences from neighboring cultures. The Atlas of World Embroidery examines many distinctive embroidery styles and traditions found across the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australasia. From the quillwork and birch boxes of Indigenous North America to the decorative matyo style of Hungary, the zardozi embroiderers of India, and the satin stitches of Han Dynasty China, Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood provides a comprehensive history of embroidery, describing its materials and tools, its designs and symbols, and its uses and makers. Emphasizing the visual aspects of embroidery across cultures, the atlas features an unprecedented array of color images celebrating the art form. Organized geographically by region and country, and focusing on hand needlework with relevant examples of machine forms, The Atlas of World Embroidery is a beautiful and authoritative exploration of this ancient craft.
• Lavishly illustrated throughout in full color with more than 300 images.
• Features full and close-up images of embroidered fabrics, including household items and clothing, along with insightful analysis.
• Includes sections on the Americas; Europe; Sub-Saharan Africa; the Arabic World; Turkey, the Iranian Plateau, and Central Asia; the Indian Subcontinent; East Asia; and Southeast Asia and Australasia—with subsections on individual countries, cultures, and kinds of embroidery.
• Contains a directory of design motifs depicting patterns from around the world.
Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood is a design historian and textile archaeologist. She is director of the Textile Research Centre in Leiden, the Netherlands, and chief editor of the multivolume Bloomsbury World Encyclopedia of Embroidery. She is the coauthor of Dressed with Distinction: Garments from Ottoman Syria and Covering the Moon: An Introduction to Middle Eastern Face Veils.
Exhibition | French Drawings in Portuguese Collections
Now on view at Portugal’s National Museum Soares dos Reis, with an English summary from the Instagram account of Trois Crayons:
The presence of many French artists in Portugal from the beginning of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century—and their impact on the development of Portuguese art, especially the decorative arts—is the great revelation of this selection of works.
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Drawings by European Masters in Portuguese Collections III: France
Desenhos de Mestres Europeus em Coleções Portuguesas III: França
Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis, Porto, 13 December 2025 — 26 April 2026
Curated by Nicholas Turner
Com mecenato do BPI | Fundação La Caixa e apoio das Tintas CIN, esta é a primeira exposição dedicada a desenhos franceses de coleções públicas e privadas portuguesas, e a terceira e última de uma série de exposições organizadas com o intuito de divulgar o pouco conhecido acervo de desenhos de antigos mestres conservado no nosso país.
A primeira exposição, Desenhos de Mestres Europeus em Coleções Portuguesas (2000–01), apresentou aos visitantes obras de referência de todas as escolas, enquanto a segunda, Desenhos de Mestres Europeus em Coleções Portuguesas II: Itália e Portugal (2021), se centrou na influência da arte italiana no desenvolvimento da arte portuguesa desde o século XVI até ao início do XIX.
Com a exposição Desenhos de Mestres Europeus em Coleções Portuguesas III: França pretende-se mostrar que a história da influência do desenho francês em Portugal é diferente, apesar de acidentada e sujeita a flutuações políticas. De facto, a presença de muitos artistas franceses em solo nacional desde o início do século XVIII até ao início do século XX—e o seu impacto no desenvolvimento da arte portuguesa, especialmente das artes decorativas—é a grande revelação da presente seleção de obras.
Quer fugindo de ambientes políticos difíceis ou evitando a forte concorrência na corte francesa, pelo menos meia dúzia de émigrés franceses, como Pierre-Antoine Quillard, Pierre Massart de Rochefort ou Jean-Baptiste Pillement, representados nesta exposição, deixaram a sua marca—e os seus desenhos—em Portugal. Este legado torna-se claro a partir de uma grande variedade de pinturas, desenhos e obras ilustradas que foram executadas no nosso país.
Com curadoria de Nicholas Turner, um dos mais prestigiados especialistas internacionais na área do desenho, a exposição Desenhos de Mestres Europeus em Coleções Portuguesas III: França, inclui 88 obras, quatro das quais em formato de livro, ficando patente ao público até 26 abril 2026.
Nicholas Turner, Desenhos de Mestres Europeus em Coleções Portuguesas III: França (Porto: Blue Book, 2026), 216 pages, ISBN: 978-9899223318, €40.
Digital Exhibition | Reframing, Refocusing, Reimagining Disability
Now available online from Winterthur:
Reframing, Refocusing, Reimagining Disability
Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library Collections
We are very excited to announce a new digital exhibit. Reframing, Refocusing, Reimagining Disability engages with select artifacts from the Winterthur Museum & Library collections created by disabled makers, for disabled users, or about disabled people.
Page from The Invited Alphabet, or Address of A to B: Containing His Friendly Proposal for the Amusement and Instruction of Good Children (London: 1809 / Winterthur Library, PZ6 R7in).
In three thematic sections, the exhibit shares stories about caretaking, aging, and disability education with artifacts that date from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that were used or made in North America. From Shaker walkers to silver mugs and eyeglasses, disability stories are everywhere in Winterthur’s collection and beyond. Co-curated by graduate students enrolled in a University of Delaware Art History seminar, along with collaborators within and beyond Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library, this digital exhibit prioritizes access and inclusion through visual description, audio recordings, and alt-text. The student co-curators hope Reframing, Refocusing, Reimagining Disability will foster conversations about how access, inclusion, and disability histories are fundamental to the study of art history, and will enable artworks and objects at Winterthur Museum & Library to testify to past disabled persons’ experiences, connections, and communities. We invite you to visit, respond to, teach with, and share the exhibit widely.
This exhibition was co-curated and co-authored by graduate students enrolled in the “Disability and American Art Histories” seminar in the Department of Art History at the University of Delaware during the 2025 fall semester. Led by Dr. Jennifer Van Horn, and undertaken in partnership with Winterthur Museum & Library, graduate curators include: Phoebe Caswell, Gabrielle Clement, Sydney Collins, Sandra James, Cameron ‘Joey’ Koo, Bella Lam, Sheng Ren, Julia Rinaudo, Lauren Teresi, and Madeleine Ward-Schultz.
This digital exhibit was made possible thanks to the generous participation of our Advisory Council, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Research Center at the University of Delaware, the Department of Art History, and Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library.
Call for Essays | History of Emotions in Visual Culture
From the Call for Contributions, via ArtHistory.net:
Edited Volume | The History of Emotions Seen through Visual Culture
Proposals due by 30 March 2026
Today, emotions are present in every aspect of daily life: think of how joy, sadness, loneliness, and compassion, to name just a few, are emotional axes that underpin the experiences of the 21st century. This premise not only marks the contemporary, but also colours all cultural production created throughout time. To speak of a history of emotions linked to visual culture is to understand that images not only shape or produce emotions and feelings in a viewer, but also act as an active instrument that represents them. See how paintings, engravings, sculptures, films, and digital images themselves participate in the configuration of an emotional language, illustrating what should be felt, how it should be done, and how it is expressed.
From this framework, the image must be understood as a located affective element, that is, its emotionality is linked to specific practices, modes of circulation, and reception that mark the entire history. Thus, proposing an examination of visual culture from the history of emotions allows us to establish a dialogue focused on tracing how all these feelings are translated through gestures, attitudes, poses, in short, any visual message, and how these, in turn, operate in processes of power, identity, memory and individual or collective experience.
This collective volume aims to explore how emotions are produced, questioned, circulated, and perpetuated through visual practices in any historical context. The resulting book is intended to form a dialogue between the history of emotions and visual culture.
The suggested thematic areas are as follows—they are not exclusive:
1 Iconography of feeling: gestures, expressions, bodies, pain, grief, fear, desire, shame, pride, tenderness, etc. All those emotions that can be gleaned from the iconographic and iconological study of a work.
2 Emotions and the politics of images: propaganda, iconoclasm, censorship, mobilisation, memory.
3 Tactics of reception: gaze, empathy, identification, and interpretive communities.
4 The materiality of affections: image objects, relics, and transmission in museums.
5 Technologies of affections: visual technologies and affections: photography, cinema, TV, social networks, AI, digital archives.
This volume seeks relevant chapters that deal with specific and broad visual corpora (painting, engraving, illustrated press, photography, cinema, memes, video games, family archives, museography, etc.), open to any period. The interest lies in proposing an argument focused not only on representations, but also on how they were used, circulated, or in which practices they were inscribed. Proposals are accepted in Spanish and English.
To be considered, please submit a proposal with a title, an abstract (300–400 words), a brief CV (100–150 words), and five keywords by 30 April 2026 to emocionesyculturavisual@hotmail.com with the subject: “CFP — Emotions and visual culture — Surname.” Notification of acceptance will be sent by 15 May 2026. Complete chapters will be due by 30 September 2026 (extendable).
Exhibition | Rome and Milan as Capitals of Neoclassicism
Installation view of the exhibition Eterno e Visione: Roma e Milano Capitali del Neoclassicismo
(Milan, Gallerie d’Italia, 2025)
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Now on view at the Gallerie d’Italia in Milan:
Eterno e Visione: Roma e Milano Capitali del Neoclassicismo
Gallerie d’Italia, Milan, 28 November 2025 — 6 April 2026
Curated by Francesco Leone, Elena Lissoni, and Fernando Mazzocca
From 1796, the year of Napoleon’s descent into Italy, until 1815, marked by the defeat at Waterloo and the Congress of Vienna, a radical political, economic, and social change took place on the peninsula. The momentous turning point of the Napoleonic Age also significantly involved the artistic scene. Only Rome and Milan escaped the decadence of major artistic centres like Florence, Venice, Genoa, and Naples. The Eternal City persisted as the universal capital of the arts due to the abundance of its heritage, from both antiquity and the Renaissance of Raphael and Michelangelo. Artists from all over the world continued to flock to Rome to learn their trade, and the city’s economy profited greatly from the presence of their studios and the activity of various workshops, which produced internationally appreciated bronzes and mosaics. The exhibition aims to evoke this exceptional creative season, comparing the highest level of artistic production of these two ‘capitals’, projected towards modern Europe while remaining firmly attached to the greatness of the past.
The leading artists in the exhibition are two brilliant men who were close friends: Antonio Canova, one of the most important artists of all time, and Giuseppe Bossi, an extraordinary painter, great connoisseur of Leonardo, and a sophisticated collector, as well as founder of the Pinactoca di Brera. Visitors can admire Antonio Canova’s masterpiece—previously thought to have been lost—the large model of a horse currently undergoing exceptional restoration. Other masterpieces by Bossi, Canova, and Andrea Appiani illustrate the creation of the image of Italy, in its well-known and then more popular iconography, due precisely to their genius.
The exhibition also highlights of one of history’s most ambitious architectural projects, conceived by the Bolognese architect Giovanni Antonio Antolini: the famous Foro Bonaparte, which, although never realised, had a major influence on the transformation of Napoleonic Milan into a modern city inspired by the magnificence of antiquity. With this utopian and visionary undertaking, Milan aspired to become the new Rome, pursuing the great ideal dream of classicism. Equally fascinating will be the re-enactment of Napoleon’s coronation as King of Italy in Milan Cathedral, through the exhibition of the so-called Italian Honours: the cape, crown, sceptre, and other splendid objects used during the ceremony, all of which underwent major restoration by Intesa Sanpaolo for the 19th edition of “Restituzioni” in 2022.
Roberto Bizzocchi, Elisa Baccini, Fernando Mazzocca, Francesco Leone, Elena Lissoni, Charles-Eloi Vial, et al., Eterno e Visione: Roma e Milano Capitali del Neoclassicismo (Turin: Allemandi, 2025), 368 pages, ISBN: 978-8842227137, €39.
Installation | Marie-Antoinette: An Eye for Beauty
Antoine-François Lebrun (possibly), Queen Marie Antoinette Medallion, ca. 1774, bronze, marble, and gilt, 13 inches high (London: The Wallace Collection, S393; S392 is the object’s paired partner).
Now on view at The Wallace Collection:
Marie-Antoinette: An Eye for Beauty
The Wallace Collection, London
2 February — 31 March 2026
Few figures fire the imagination quite like Marie-Antoinette (1755–1793). Born an archduchess at the glittering Austrian court, her destiny was decided by her marriage to the future Louis XVI of France. She soon attuned herself to the French vogue and the glamour of life at Versailles, while also cultivating a discerning eye for the beautiful. Once crowned queen, she used her almost limitless wealth and influence to commission interiors and artworks of unparalleled refinement, right up until the dawn of revolution. The Wallace Collection cares for some of the world’s greatest works of art associated with the ill-fated queen. Discover a selection of these during this special two-month trail, which offers a tantalising glimpse into her sumptuous, lost world.
Exhibition | 1725: Native American Allies at the Court of Louis XV
1725: Native American Allies at the Court of Louis XV
1725: Des alliés amérindiens à la cour de Louis XV
Château de Versailles, 25 November 2025 — 3 May 2026
Curated by Jonas Musco, Paz Núñez-Regueiro, and Bertrand Rondot
In 1725, four Native American chiefs and a Native American woman from the Mississippi Valley were received in France as part of an unprecedented diplomatic mission. The event marked the climax of efforts by the French crown to build relationships with Indigenous nations in North America, amidst ongoing conflicts between European colonial powers and the Indigenous allies. This exhibition offers a rare opportunity to explore the history and lives of the Native American nations of the Mississippi Valley in the 18th century, their connections with France, the extraordinary Atlantic crossing undertaken by their leaders, and their meeting with Louis XV, the royal court, and the capital.
The Indigenous Mississippi Valley in the 18th Century
The first section of the exhibition immerses visitors in the complex world of Native American societies of the Mississippi Valley at the time the French began exploring and settling the area. The encounter between these two civilizations soon led to a lasting alliance based on close diplomatic ties. The exhibition introduces the major Indigenous nations at the heart of this story through a contemporary map specially created for the show, alongside rare 18th-century maps. Some of these nations were already allied with the French through earlier treaties, notably reinforced in 1701 by the Great Peace of Montreal, a historic treaty exceptionally presented to the public.
Through a series of rare portraits—some of the only surviving from that period—a different image of Native societies emerges, far from the 19th-century Plains stereotypes. The selection of artefacts includes a remarkable feathered headdress made in the 18th century for a high-ranking chief, likely the oldest of this type known in the world. The presentation continues with a glimpse into their seasonal way of life, alternating between farming and hunting. Their relationship with the living world is also spiritual, involving social connections with more-than-human beings, such as the thunderbirds—powerful spirits often depicted on hides presented to the French as diplomatic gifts.
The Founding of a French Colony: Louisiana
The second section focuses on the close ties developed between the French and their Indigenous allies after the founding of the Louisiana colony. A selection of objects illustrates the cultural blending that emerged in the early 18th century: war clubs decorated with fleur-de-lis, necklaces made of imported beads, and European knives sheated in Native-style scabbards. The most emblematic items are a peace pipe richly decorated with feathers and a painted hide depicting it.
In 1724, to strengthen the alliance, the Compagnie des Indes proposed inviting the Native leaders to the court of young Louis XV. Étienne Véniard de Bourgmont, commander of the Missouri post, contacted the Otoe, Osage, and Missouria nations—their responses, transcribed in diplomatic correspondence, will be featured in the exhibition—while the Illinois sent Chicagou, the Michigamea chief and conveyed the words of Mamantouensa, chief of the Kaskadia, through Jesuit missionary Nicolas Ignace de Beaubois.
Forming the delegation was not without difficulty. Several other nations planned to send representatives, but the shipwreck of the vessel meant to transport them to France discouraged many from continuing. Ultimately, the delegation consisted of four chiefs and the daughter of a Missouri chief. They set sail in the spring of 1725. From that moment, the delegates were treated as international ambassadors, and a document reveals they were served ‘at the captain’s table’, an honor reserved for elite guests.
The Delegation’s Reception at Court
The final section traces the steps of the Native American chiefs’ visit to France—Paris, Versailles, and Fontainebleau—and details the royal court’s diplomatic protocol for receiving foreign embassies. Thanks to invaluable accounts from the Mercure de France, we follow their movements: meetings with the directors of the Compagnie des Indes, the organizers of the journey, and with princes and princesses of the royal blood.
The exhibition highlights the audience granted by Louis XV to the chiefs on November 25, 1725, at Fontainebleau. This was the most symbolic moment of the visit, during which the chiefs gave speeches to the king, who responded with marked interest in his guests. After touring Versailles, Marly, and Trianon, the delegates were honored with an invitation to hunt alongside with the king at Fontainebleau. They gladly accepted and participated ‘in their own way’—on foot and armed with bows.
The exhibition pathway, punctuated with excerpts from the Mercure de France, presents gifts similar to those exchanged between the Native delegates, the king and the government: prestigious headdresses, bows, and a peace pipe for the Native visitors, and a gold medal and other precious artifacts for the French. Portraits of the main French figures and, for the first time in France, a portrait of a Miami Native American will bring this historic meeting to life.
The exhibition concludes with a reference to the ‘Danse des Sauvages’, a famous piece by Jean-Philippe Rameau added to his opera Les Indes galantes. Inspired by the dance of two Native chiefs at the Comédie-Italienne, this rarely discussed source of inspiration reveals the enduring cultural impact of the 1725 delegation in France.
A special visitor program will allow guests to hear from Native members of the exhibition’s scientific committee as they reflect on the modern-day relationship between their nations and France, echoing this long-shared history.
Curators
• Jonas Musco, Historian, Research Associate
• Paz Núñez-Regueiro, Chief Curator of Heritage, Musée du quai Branly–Jacques Chirac
• Bertrand Rondot, Chief Curator of Heritage, Palace of Versailles
The exhibition is developed within the framework of the research project CRoyAN – Royal Collections of North America—coordinated by the musée du quai Branly–Jacques Chirac, in dialogue with four Native nations: the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, the Quapaw Nation, the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, and the Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma. The exhibition is organized thanks to the patronage of The CORA Foundation. The exhibition is co-organized with the musée du quai Branly–Jacques Chirac.
Jonas Musco, Paz Núñez-Regueiro, and Bertrand Rondot, 1725: Des alliés amérindiens à la cour de Louis XV (Paris: Liénart, 2025), 160 pages, ISBN: 978-2359064766, €29.
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