KERRY JAMES MARSHALL — THE HISTORIES

The Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris opens Kerry James Marshall: The Histories on 18 September 2026, with the exhibition running until 24 January 2027. The museum and Paris Musées both describe it as the first exhibition in France devoted to Marshall, who was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1955 and has become one of the most influential painters of his generation.

The scale is substantial rather than token: 70 works are on view, and eight paintings are new works made specifically for the exhibition. The survey spans Marshall’s practice from the 1980s to the present and is organised in a chrono-thematic sequence, allowing visitors to see recurring ideas develop across different bodies of work rather than treating the show as a greatest-hits line-up.

For Paris visitors, that makes the exhibition more than another short-term museum stop. It is a rare chance to see a career-length Marshall survey in France, with the show landing in a city whose own nineteenth-century painting tradition is one of the sources he has repeatedly absorbed and challenged.

Marshall is best known for large-scale paintings in which Black people occupy the centre of scenes that can move between ordinary domestic life, public space, history painting and allegory. The Paris exhibition places that painting practice at the centre, while also including prints, drawings and a sculpture drawn from museum and private collections in North America and Europe.

Official exhibition material points to a broad field of references: the established canon of Western art history, nineteenth-century French painting, contemporary popular culture, Afrofuturism, comics and science fiction. The result is not a single-issue survey. Marshall repeatedly takes familiar visual structures and repopulates them, asking who has historically been visible in art’s grand narratives and who has been pushed to the margins.

The museum says the works address histories including the Middle Passage and the legacies of the US Civil Rights and Black Power movements, while avoiding direct depictions of violence or alienation. That distinction matters to the tone of the exhibition: its argument is carried through presence, scale, symbolism and art-historical quotation as much as through explicit narrative.

Marshall’s paintings often borrow the authority of established art-historical formats — portraiture, landscape, history painting and scenes of everyday life — then make Black figures impossible to treat as peripheral. The Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris frames that strategy as a deliberate response to long histories of exclusion from the visual canon.

Paris is a meaningful place for the show because French painting is part of Marshall’s reference system, not simply the backdrop for this tour stop. The museum’s opening-day programme explicitly highlights his relationship with French painting, and the broader retrospective places European art traditions alongside African-American history, popular visual culture and speculative imagery.

The museum also situates this exhibition within its own history of major monographic shows by Black American artists, pointing to earlier Paris presentations of Kara Walker and Jean-Michel Basquiat. For visitors who know the museum mainly for its twentieth-century collection, The Histories is also a reminder that its contemporary programme can be as important as the permanent displays.

The exhibition originated with the Royal Academy of Arts in London and was developed in collaboration with the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris / Paris Musées and Kunsthaus Zürich. It ran at the Royal Academy from September 2025 to 18 January 2026, followed by Zurich from 27 February to 16 August 2026.

That touring history helps explain the breadth of loans and the unusually comprehensive catalogue. The Paris Musées French edition is the first French-language publication devoted to Marshall and reproduces all of the works in the exhibition, while the English edition is published by the Royal Academy.

For travellers comparing European museum calendars, Paris is therefore not merely repeating a small selection from the earlier venues: the official Paris presentation still advertises the full 70-work survey and highlights the eight new paintings created for the exhibition.

Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris is at 11 avenue du Président Wilson, 75116 Paris, between the Trocadéro and the Seine-side museums around the Palais de Tokyo. The City of Paris listing gives exhibition hours of 10:00–18:00 Tuesday to Wednesday and Friday to Sunday, with a Thursday late opening until 21:30.

Current exhibition admission is €17 full price and €15 reduced, with free admission for visitors under 18. The city event page currently marks the exhibition as reservation only, so booking a timed slot before crossing town is the safer move, especially during opening weeks and weekends.

Accessibility information on the City of Paris listing covers visitors with reduced mobility and several sensory or cognitive accessibility needs. If you require a specific service or signing provision, check the museum’s current access information when reserving because support can vary by event and time slot.

The museum has scheduled an introductory conversation for 16:00–17:30 on Friday 18 September, the public opening day. The event brings Marshall together with curator Mark Godfrey and Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris director Fabrice Hergott to discuss the artist’s career, the conception of the exhibition, its title and Marshall’s relationship with French painting.

The museum lists the session as registration-based and subject to availability. It also forms the first date in a wider conference programme tied to the exhibition, with later talks scheduled during the run. If the opening conversation is full, the exhibition itself continues for more than four months and the museum’s event calendar is the best place to check the remaining programme.

This article was checked on 18 September 2026 against the live Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Paris Musées and City of Paris listings. Exhibition dates, opening hours, pricing, booking conditions and event availability can change, so the museum remains the final source immediately before a visit.

• Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris — Kerry James Marshall: The Histories
• Paris Musées — Kerry James Marshall: The Histories
• City of Paris — exhibition listing, hours, prices and access
• Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris — opening-day conversation