HALL NAPOLÉON

Pharaoh of the Two Lands. The African story of the kings of Napata
28 April–25 July 2022

In the 8th century BC, in Nubia, a kingdom grew up around the capital in Napata. Around 730 BC, the sovereign Piankhy set out to conquer Egypt, thus giving birth to a line of Kushite pharaohs. Shebitku, Shabaka, Taharqa and Tanutamun, his successors of the 25th Dynasty, reigned for more than 50 years over a kingdom that stretched from the confluence of the While and Blue Niles all the way to the Nile Delta. The most famous of them was, without a doubt, Taharqa.

The exhibition tells the epic story of the conquest of a vast valley, followed by defeat at the hands of the Assyrians. It highlights the importance of a once-mighty and far-reaching kingdom located in what is today northern Sudan and what was, in antiquity, the gateway to Africa.

By launching this exhibition, rich in hieroglyphics, in 2022, the Musée du Louvre celebrates the bicentenary of the deciphering of this ancient Egyptian script by Champollion. ‘Pharaoh of the Two Lands’ picks up where ‘Meroe, an Empire on the Nile’ – an exhibition presented at the Louvre in 2010 – left off. Indeed, it is organised in connection with the archaeological excavations carried out by the museum in Sudan, which for ten years focused on the site of Muweis. Now, attention will be turned to El-Hassa, 19 miles to the north, not far from the pyramids of Meroe.

Exhibition curators: Vincent Rondot, director of the Department of Egyptian Antiquities, Musée du Louvre, assisted by Nadia Licitra, Faïza Drici and Hélène Guichard.
 

The last major exhibition dedicated to Still Lifes from Antiquity to the 20th century was organised in 1952 in Paris by Charles Sterling. ‘THINGS’ pays homage to this giant of art history and brings the study of this genre up to date by incorporating all that has nourished it: art history from antiquity to contemporary times, literature, poetry, philosophy, archaeology, botany and ecology.

The exhibition broadens the chronological and geographic scope of still lifes by taking a look at other cultures that have given place of pride to the genre. It features the work of contemporary artists who have drawn inspiration from their predecessors, changing the way we see the past. Long relegated to the lower echelons of a hierarchy of genres, still lifes deserve to be reconsidered in light of the modern era’s growing attachment to the material world and the new relationships being forged between man and inanimate objects.

Exhibition curator: Laurence Bertrand Dorléac, university professor.
 

Giorgio Vasari : the Book of drawings, the fate of a legendary collection 
31 March–18 July 2022
Rotonde Sully (south)

16^th-century drawings from Bologna
22 September 2022–9 January 2023
Rotonde Sully (north)

OTHER EXHIBITIONS

Yves Saint-Laurent at the museums
29 January–19 September 2022
Denon wing, Level 1, Galerie d’Apollon

Splendours of Central Asia. The trade routes of Uzbekistan (provisional title)
24 November 2022–March 2023
Richelieu wing, Level -1


FRANCE-PORTUGAL SEASON

Pedro Cabrita Reis, The Three Graces, 2022
14 February–7 June 2022
Tuileries Garden, ‘Grand Réservé nord’

The Golden Age of the Portuguese Renaissance
10 June–10 October 2022
Richelieu wing, Level 2, room 831


AT THE MUSÉE EUGÈNE-DELACROIX

Delacroix and nature