In our contemporary world, exhibitions follow one another at an unbridled pace, depending on our appetite for emotions and knowledge. What’s left of it, once the doors are closed? A catalogue, an archive file, a few photos, but sometimes much less, especially when you go back in time - a small booklet, a simple invitation can be the main trace. These ephemeral documents, which often only lived the time to be hurriedly scanned, have been collected by the library since its origins, probably under the impetus of some of its first librarians, René Jean and Clotilde Brière-Misme, who were also art critics. Nicknamed here «green boxes», the name of the green boxes that originally kept them, and which still preserve them in part, they constitute one of the large collections of the library, alongside modern prints or holiday books for example. The European Heritage Days are an opportunity to present for the first time a selection to the public, and to show the extreme richness and diversity, often unsuspected, of these small witnesses to the history of art.
Curator: Jérôme Delatour, INHA
Practical information
Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 September
10:00 - 18:30
Salle Labrouste
Access via the Vivienne Garden, 5 rue Vivienne 75002 Paris
Free entrance
Reservation required on slots of 15 minutes