Marseille-Provence has been selected to be the European Capital of Culture in 2013. All year long, hundreds of cultural and artistic events will take place throughout the Provence region: in Aix-en-Provence, Arles, Aubagne, Gardanne, Istres, La Ciotat, Martigues, Salon-de-Provence and, of course, Marseille.

On the menu: dance, music, visual arts, theatre, exhibitions, street art, literature, digital art, gastronomy and cinema.

Visitors will be invited to take part in events at museums, theatres and open-air venues in both urban areas and natural environments. Marseille-Provence 2013: an unmissable event.

Christelle MAUREAU / christelle@claudinecolin.com

Palazzo Grassi-François Pinault Foundation will host a monograph exhibition by Urs Fischer from 15 April to 15 July 2012.

This exhibition is the first of a series of monograph exhibitions which will be dedicated to major contemporary artists and held either in tandem or alternation with the thematic shows based upon the François Pinault Collection.

We know Rodin the sculptor, but do we know Rodin the draftman? This exhibition presents a spectacular collection of 300 drawings of his last thirty years when drawing was the artist’s predominant form of expression. This late period of Rodin’s career demonstrates the extraordinary tension between the naturalism of a drawing, capturing a gesture, a movement in all its immediacy, and the increasing independence of line and color in the artist’s work. Rodin’s freedom in drawing contributed to opening an immense space for the artists of the 20th century.

Following the exceptional donation by Severin Wunderman of 1525 works of Jean Cocteau and his entourage, after three years of construction works, the Jean Cocteau Museum - Severin Wunderman Collection, a major cultural project led by the town of Menton, opens this autumn. The building will be created by the international architect, Rudy Ricciotti.

The museum will become the world's first and most important public resource for the work of Jean Cocteau.

Albane Champey / albane@claudinecolin.com

As part of a new series of exhibitions dedicated to the art scene in large cities, the Maison Rouge first honours the city of Winnipeg (Manitoba, Canada). Using a variety of media, visitors will discover works marked by a historical and mythical heritage as well as a certain despair tinged with immigrant humour, which populated the region during the 19th and 20th century. Artists such as Sarah Anne Jonhson, Jon Pylypchuck, Shary Boyle, Guy Maddin, William Eakin and Diana Thorneycroft, will provide visitors with one of the most complete look into Winnipeg’s fertile and imaginative artistic community.

Julie Martinez / julie@claudinecolin.com

The Bernard Magrez Cultural Institute is a new private initiative with the following goals: to organize cultural events, to follow an acquisitions program and support for the production works of art by young artists. Its inaugural exhibition «L’Etoffe du Temps», will present works by conceptual and figurative artists, such as Darren Almond, On Kawara, Anselm Kiefer, Yves Klein, Claude Lévêque, Roman Opalka, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Luca Pancrazi, Pablo Picasso, Martial Raysse, Xavier Veilhan, Huang Yong Ping et Chen Zhen, which play around the notion of time in contemporary art, taking Picasso’s Femme Assise (1949) as a starting point.

Ingrid Cadoret / ingrid@claudinecolin.com

Erre is a multimedia group exhibition, which takes the labyrinth as a starting to tackle questions on wandering, loss, strolling and their modes of representation in contemporary art. The theme is treated through its architectural, physical and mental dimensions.

Valentine Dolla / valentine@claudinecolin.com

This exhibition presentq a selection of historical pieces and new works from the François Pinault Collection, including several site-specific projects, which question the idea of uncertainty, our convictions about identity, and revisit the relationship between intimate space and the space of the artwork. Among the twenty artists in the exhibition In Praise of Doubt, almost half of them have never been included in previous exhibitions of the François Pinault Collection.

Eva Astaburuaga Dalla Venezia / eva@claudinecolin.com
Constance Gounod / constance@claudinecolin.com

A NEW MUSEUM OF 20th AND 21st CENTURY OUTSIDER ART IN NORTHERN EUROPE

Reopening exhibition: The World as a Poem 

After over four years of renovation and extension work, the Museum of Modern Art of Lille Métropole (Villeneuve d’Ascq) will be reopening to the public on 25 September 2010 under a new name: the LaM, Lille Métropole Musée d’art moderne, d’art contemporain et d’art brut (Museum of Modern, Contemporary and Outsider Art). Its two fine architectural complexes, surrounded by a sculpture park (Alexander Calder, Pablo Picasso, Eugène Dodeigne, etc.), will henceforth house three prestigious collections of the art of the 20th and 21st centuries, including a unique collection of Outsider Art.

Press opening: 21 September 2010

Anne Monéger-Laval / Letizia Calcamo / lam@claudinecolin.com

The Maison Jean Cocteau is an important expression of the artist’s tastes and private life, now offering the public, after five years of preparation, a perfect reconstitution of the bedroom, office, and main sitting room, which notably contains a masterly canvas by Christian Bérard. The renovations, led by architect François Magendie and the team of Dominique Païni-Nathalie Crinière (who organised the Jean Cocteau exhibit at the Centre Pompidou in 2003), also allow for the display of a selection of drawings from the Cocteau estate, which includes, in addition to the best of Cocteau, works by Picasso, Warhol, Modigliani, Buffet, Blanche, Man Ray...

Sandrine Mahaut / sandrine@claudinecolin.com