Art Spaces

On the serious side, Paris is replete with breathtaking museums. World-class doesn’t even begin to describe Paris’ art treasures. Big flex: we are #1 in the whole wide world when it comes to places to see amazing art and antiquities. 

Then there’s the oth­er side of town: the ille­gal artists’ squats, the for­mer­ly ille­gal artists’ squats (the ones the city was forced to give per­mits to under polit­i­cal pres­sure), and then there’s the always clas­sic, ‘let’s take this boat and have shows on it’.

Wher­ev­er in Paris there is a spare palace or cool space lay­ing around, we will fill it with art and call it a muse­um or a gallery or even bet­ter, a ‘friche’ (which is trans­lat­ed to Eng­lish as ‘waste­land’ so I’m gonna say that’s not what we mean here). Where we have a water­way, some­one will buy some funky old house­boats or riv­er freighters from Ams­ter­dam and open a gallery/wine bar. Unused and vacant loft space?  Parisians respond by break­ing in and host­ing art shows and jams. It’s how we roll. 

While it’s hard to beat the Mon­et-Picas­so-DaVin­ci-lev­el of Fine Art that can be found at our opu­lent and (right­ly) famous gal­leries and muse­ums, we’ve also got float­ing con­cert barges, freaky semi-legal venues,  and a choco­late Eif­fel Tow­er to fin­ish on a sweet note.

So now you know what we know: that in Paris, alter­na­tive art spaces are on a spec­trum. Not only do we have protest spaces fund­ed one can of beer at a time…to the next gen of Frich­es with seri­ous artists mash­ing away on a Mac­Book with an organ­ic poke bowl at their side… and a few almost unclas­si­fi­able art spaces and bizarro muse­ums are here too. To get some of that freaky vibe, check out these out­side-the-box art spaces. Oui, some are more orga­nized and con­ven­tion­al than others.