May itinerary | 05.26 in Paris
Hey everyone, I've posted here my monthly roundups before and hope they've been useful to some! Here is one for this May 😄
In this edition of Paris Monthly:
- The Dior fashion archive that almost never went public
- Free evening in the strangest museum in the Marais
- Jazz taking over Saint-Germain-des-Prés
- Hundreds of studios open across Paris
- Sunday Reset walk with the girls
- A few current popups
+ what’s been on my radar!
✶ Cultural
Martin Parr – Global Warning
Until May 24
Martin Parr’s photography somehow manages to be funny, uncomfortable, affectionate, and devastating all at once. Global Warning focuses on tourism, consumption, climate, and modern excess through his unmistakably saturated lens.
Location: Jeu de Paume
Cost: up to 14e
Azzedine Alaïa – La Collection Dior
until June 21
Alaïa spent decades secretly collecting nearly 600 Dior pieces — not as an investor, as someone who was simply obsessed with what Dior and his successors understood about a woman’s body, construction, and silhouette.
More than 100 garments are now on display, and the exhibition feels surprisingly intimate for something tied to such a major fashion house.
Location: Azzedine Alaïa Foundation
Cost: up to 12e
Nan Goldin: This Will Not End Well
until June 21
Nan Goldin’s work feels like being handed fragments of someone’s life: friendship, intimacy, grief, addiction, tenderness. The exhibition focuses on her immersive slideshows and film works spanning the last fifty years.
Location: Grand Palais
Cost: up to 13e
✶ Spotted in the city
May is when Paris becomes easiest to wander without a plan. One neighborhood leads into another with galleries, open studios, museum nights, and cultural weekends unfolding across the city.
Paris open studios & gallery season
- Père-Lachaise Artists’ Open Studios — May 8–11
- Paris Gallery Weekend — May 29–31
- Belleville Artists’ Open Studios — May 28–31
And another few I came across while browsing the streets:
I'll definitely be checking these out myself.
Museum night – Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature
May 23, 6pm–midnight
The Hunting and Nature Museum is one of Paris’s stranger cultural spaces: taxidermy, contemporary art, and old salons inside a historic Marais mansion.
Free entry all evening, including a temporary show by Annette Messager.
Location: Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature
Cost: free on May 23
Saint-Germain-des-Prés Jazz Festival
May 18–24
This is when the neighborhood leans into its old reputation with a week of jazz across Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Performances spill across small venues, courtyards, and churches throughout the Rive Gauche.
Location: several
Cost: see performances
Popups
A few popups currently on. A mix of vintage fashion finds, secondhand accessories, and a beauty popup by The Ordinary.
https://femmescollective.substack.com/i/196576171/popups
✶ Social
Lost in Frenchlation: Trois Couleurs Trilogy
Kieślowski’s Blue, White, and Red screened in French with English subtitles at a small cinema on Rue Mouffetard. The screenings here usually turn into full evenings, with drinks before or after and occasional conversations with directors or film crews.
Last time I attended, they invited the director for a Q&A afterward, which definitely changed the way I understood the film we had just watched.
Location: Lost in Frenchlation
Cost: from 8e
Continue reading here:
https://femmescollective.substack.com/p/may-itinerary-0526-in-paris