The Orsay Museum of Paris gave birth to an innovative initiative to raise awareness of the public on climate change through art. The itinerant exhibition entitled “100 works that tell the climate” (In the original language “100 œuvres qui Raccontent le climats”) will bring, between March and July 2025, one hundred masterpieces of the 19th and 20th centuries in 31 museums distributed in distributed in twelve regions of France.
The goal is Create a dialogue between art and scienceby connecting the artistic representations of landscapes, natural phenomena and scenes of daily life to current climatic challenges. Among the selected works include paintings by great masters such as Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet, Eugène Delacroix and Gustave Caillebotte, and makes use of the collaboration of world-renowned experts in the field of climatology, including Valérie Mason-Delmotte, Emma Haziza, Luc Abbadie and Jean Jouzel.
The choice of works is not accidental: each painting has been selected for its own link with a particular climatic event or an environmental characteristic of the territory in which it will be exposed. A significant example is The flood in Port-Marly of Sisleywhich will be exhibited at the Girodet Museum of Montargis, a city affected by devastating floods in 2016. The museum was also seriously damaged by the floods they have compromise most of its collection. Even today, only 40% of the works have been restored. This connection between the past and the present allows visitors to understand how climate change have always influenced reality, making works of art real Visual archives of environmental history.
There will also be a thematic path and a book
In addition to the widespread exhibition, the Orsay Museum will host a thematic path In their permanent collections, with thematic labels to guide visitors in a path dedicated to the climate. At the same time, a book which collects contributions from worldly renowned curators and scientists, including Jean Jouzel, Valérie Mason-Delmotte, Emma Haziza and Luc Abbadie, who will analyze climate change through art.
A fundamental aspect of this project is its commitment to sustainability. To limit the ecological imprint of the initiative, the transport of the works was optimized through regional groupings and the use of biodegradable materials for packaging.
The Orsay Museum and the partner institutions thus demonstrate that Culture and environmental responsibility can coexisttransmitting a message consistent with the theme of the exhibition. The initiative represents a unique opportunity to reflect on our relationship with the environment through the gaze of the artists of the past.
As he points out Sylvain Amicpresident of the Orsay Museum, this operation is not only a testimony, but an invitation to action: art becomes a means for sensitize, inspire and mobilize Today’s public in the fight against climate change. The goal is to bring this reflection outside the big cities, involving local communities and territories often more exposed to the consequences of global warming.
