Just because it’s cold doesn’t mean you have to stay at home! I’ve been lucky enough to visit some fascinating and varied exhibitions this month. In Paris, the options are endless, and there are always little gems to discover. Culture is also a way to travel without leaving. And there’s more to it than just Paris! Ready for the journey?

For this February selection, we’ll start by heading to Finland, then we’ll make a detour to Vienna before setting our sights on Montmartre to explore a rather little-known museum in the capital.

I will then take you to explore the tropical forests to discover some of their inhabitants. Finally, we’ll take a quick trip to Strasbourg to visit the exhibition currently on display at the Tomi Ungerer Museum.

Impressions of Helsinki at the Finnish Institute

I admit, I didn’t know about this cultural center located right in the heart of the Latin Quarter.

Among the good reasons to pay a visit right now is the Impressions of Helsinki exhibition, which presents the works of four illustrators: Antti Kalevi, Leena Kisonen, Hanna Konola, and Matti Pikkujämsä. They all worked with Kauniste, a textile publisher based in Helsinki.

The works share a common cheerful color palette which, I find, feels great in the middle of winter. They are displayed in the Institute’s Café area. You can therefore admire them while enjoying your coffee. I hear their cakes are delicious, but on the evening I visited, they had already been raided…

At the entrance, you will discover a selection of objects by young designers from Helsinki. Tablecloths, blankets, etc., which make for lovely gift ideas. To be honest, I would have loved to take one of the exhibited pieces home!

As part of this exhibition, the Institute offers creative workshops for adults and children. We haven’t tested them ourselves, but they seem interesting enough to recommend.

Small textile baskets

Sunday, March 8th at 10 AM or 3 PM with Hélène Pinaud and Julien Schwartzmann, a young couple of architects passionate about design, decoration, graphic arts, and photography. On the agenda: how to make a decorative basket using Kauniste printed fabric. Great for storing your small items in the bedroom, office, bathroom…
Price €25 (materials included, free drink).

Patterned characters, with Steffie Brocoli

Sunday, March 22nd at 10 AM, 2 PM, or 4 PM with young French illustrator Steffie Brocoli. With her, budding artists aged 5 to 10 will be able to let their imagination run wild and create a gallery of funny portraits!
Children will first be introduced to creating patterns on paper, then move on to collage and marker drawing to bring funny little characters to life before heading home with their creations.
Price €12 (materials included, free drink)
Workshop reserved for children aged 5 to 10.

Institute hours:
Tuesday to Saturday from 9 AM to 6 PM / Sunday from 10 AM to 6 PM

Impressions of Helsinki exhibition
Until March 28, 2015
Finnish Institute
60 Rue des Écoles – 75005 Paris
Pro tip: admission is free!

In the time of Klimt, the Vienna Secession at the Pinacothèque de Paris

The exhibition immerses us in 1900s Vienna, in the heart of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which saw the emergence of a major artistic movement known as the Secession. Gustav Klimt is one of its most prominent representatives.

It was in 1897 that Klimt founded the Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs Secession, more famously known as the Secession. The goal: to break free from the academism of the time and create in complete freedom. In 1902, the Secession paid tribute to Beethoven.

Klimt produced his interpretation of the Ninth Symphony, which he named the Beethoven Frieze. This work, several meters long, has been reconstructed to scale and is being presented for the first time in France.

But it is the female figure that primarily occupies Klimt. A Terra incognita that his contemporary Freud also sought to fathom. Klimt’s women appear at times fragile, at others sultry.

Among his masterpieces, Judith, whose applications of gold and silver leaf reproduce the effects of jewelry.

In 1903, Josef Hoffmann, Koloman Moser, and the industrialist Fritz Waerndorfer founded the Wiener Werkstätte, or “Viennese Workshops.” The goal: to combine fine arts with decorative arts to create a form of total art accessible to the greatest number of people, where applied arts would find new life.

The Workshops produced items such as furniture, jewelry, and ceramics, some pieces of which can be admired in the exhibition.

About 10 years after the founding of the Secession, a new generation of artists such as Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka emerged in direct lineage. The Secession is at the origin of one of the major currents of modern art: Expressionism.

In the time of Klimt, the Vienna Secession exhibition
Until June 21, 2015
Pinacothèque 8, rue Vignon – 75 009 Paris
Full price €13 – Reduced price €9
An audio guide will be provided free of charge to individual visitors on self-guided tours

The Drawn Notebooks – the art of drawing at the Halle Saint Pierre

The Halle Saint Pierre is the Parisian cultural center dedicated to art brut (outsider art). For its first exhibition of 2015, the Halle Saint Pierre is inviting the publishing house Les Cahiers dessinés.

Over 500 works of all types, created by 67 artists, are presented: humorous drawings, editorial cartoons, artist sketches…

In short, an extraordinary panorama of this abundant art form that is often overlooked.

The exhibition presents drawings by artists including Victor Hugo and Vallotton.

Humorous drawings obviously have their place.

I personally rediscovered with pleasure Mix & Remix and Bosc, who are also being honored in an exhibition in Strasbourg that I will tell you about below.

Among the discoveries, I was touched by the sensitive work of Anne Gourouben, whose drawings emerge from a fog that is that of a painful family memory.

The exhibition also gives pride of place to drawn portraits.

This exhibition, over which the memory of Cabu, Wolinski, Charb, Tignous, and Honoré looms, and which takes stock of two centuries of drawing, is one of the must-sees of the moment.

Les Cahiers dessinés exhibition
Until August 14, 2015
Halle Saint Pierre
2, rue Ronsard – 75018 Paris
Full price: €8 – Reduced price €6.50

Tracking the great apes at the Jardin des Plantes

What do we know about great apes? This wonderful exhibition, designed by the National Museum of Natural History, invites you to meet chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans in their environment.

Go see it! The path guides visitors step-by-step with numerous, intelligently designed interactive displays. There is something to appeal to both adults and children.

You will first get to know the great apes. For example, you will learn using a puzzle how to distinguish a Bornean orangutan from a Sumatran orangutan.

The exhibition presents the work of scientists, paleontologists, and geneticists. Short films allow you to accompany them in the field. Did you know that there were great apes in Europe for several million years?

The exhibition also traces the history of knowledge regarding great apes. In the 17th century, with the colonies, Europeans saw the arrival of the first chimpanzees and orangutans from Africa and Asia. Apes became circus attractions or the subjects of cruel scientific experiments.

Fortunately, the work of certain scientists is changing our view of those who are our cousins. Three women committed themselves to the field for the conservation of great apes: Jane Goodall, Biruté Galdikas, and Dian Fossey, who paid for it with her life.

The 4th part of the exhibition immerses the visitor in a tropical forest and allows them to grasp the work of researchers in the field. We learn, for instance, that it sometimes takes 10 years to habituate a community of chimpanzees or a group of gorillas.

A fun exercise lets you find the tools that great apes use. I also learned that great apes practice self-medication: when they cough, chimpanzees sometimes chew Eucalyptus bark, a plant known to soothe coughs.

The last part of the exhibition alerts visitors to the threats weighing on great apes: trafficking, deforestation. Multimedia features, in particular, allow you to understand the right behaviors to adopt to put an end to animal trafficking.

Debates (free and open to all) in the auditorium of the Grande Galerie de l’Évolution complement this exhibition.

Great apes and the forest – Monday, March 9th, at 6 PM
The evolution of great apes – Monday, June 1st, at 6 PM
Conservation: how to take action to preserve great apes – Monday, October 12th, at 6 PM

Note that the Museum is launching a call for donations campaign (by check or online) to fight against chimpanzee poaching in Uganda.

Tracking the Great Apes exhibition
Until March 21, 2016

National Museum of Natural History
Jardin des Plantes — Grande Galerie de l’Évolution
36, rue Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire – 75 005 Paris

Bosc: Humor in black ink at the Tomi Ungerer Museum

His name may not be known to you, but his drawings are surely familiar. Bosc (1924-1973) is one of the greatest French humor cartoonists of the 20th century.

He inspired an entire generation of cartoonists. A keen observer of human behavior, his drawings are timeless.

His gaze is directed at society and politics, but also at couples. Daily life and its little trifles inspire him to create drawings full of irony and poetry.

In his sights, notably, contemporary art and its excesses. Savour it…

Marked by the Indochina War in which he participated, Bosc denounces the horrors and absurdities of armed conflicts.

Bosc inspired, among others, Sempé and two dearly departed figures: Cabu and Wolinski. The exhibition actually presents the last “front page” of Hara-Kiri and the first of Charlie Hebdo. Moving.

Bosc: Humor in black ink
Until March 1, 2015
Tomi Ungerer Museum
2, av. de la Marseillaise – Strasbourg
Full price: €6.5 – Reduced price: €3.5