Abbey Museum – Exhibition: Resonance
Description
From Saturday, October 18, 2025 to Sunday, September 27, 2026 at the Abbey Museum in Saint-Claude.
The Abbey Museum in Saint-Claude invites you to discover “Resonance”: an exhibition where the works respond to, complement, and echo each other from one room to another.
Paintings, sculptures, photographs and drawings take you on a unique journey where the great figures of modern art – Picasso, Braque, Goya – and some of the most exciting contemporary artists of our time, such as Djamel Tatah, Silvia Bächli and Xavier Veilhan, interact.
Ancient and contemporary works resonating with Saint-Claude
From the archaeological basement to the second-floor galleries, the visitor's journey unfolds through unexpected encounters. Works from the Frac Franche-Comté collection are interspersed among those of the museum, opening new perspectives on universal themes: landscape, still life, portrait, history, and heritage.
Here, eras intertwine: a contemporary drawing illuminates an old painting, a photograph responds to a sculpture. These juxtapositions invite us to look differently, to be surprised by the emerging dialogues between the works.
Major artists at the heart of the Abbey Museum's exhibition
BÄCHLI Silvia, BARDONE Guy, BARI Jean-Luc, BARNABÉ Duilio, BEAUDIN André, BORÈS Francisco, BOURGEAT Lilian, BRAQUE Georges, BUFFET Bernard, CHASTEL Roger, COGNÉE Philippe, COLLIN-THIÉBAUT Gérard, CONNOR Russell, CORAS Josette, DESNOYER François, ESTÈVE Maurice, FOURNEL Jacques, GENIS René, GIRARD Stéphan, GOYA Francisco de, GRIS Juan, GRIVET Gaël, GROMAIRE Marcel, GUIRAMAND Paul, JAMMES Louis, MILROY Lisa, MONINOT Bernard, MORANDI Giorgio, MUŠIČ Zoran, PERRAY Régis, PICASSO Pablo, POITEVIN Eric, PRASSINOS Mario, RAETZ Markus, REBEYROLLE Paul, REGLI Peter, REIP Hugues, SCHLIER Daniel, TATAH Djamel, TOREN Amikam, VEILHAN Xavier, Jacques Villon, Édouard Vuillard, Christoph Weber, Junji Yamashita
Josette Coras, a Jura artist to (re)discover
The exhibition also highlights Josette Coras (1926–2008), an artist from Franche-Comté with a poetic and powerful vision. Her engravings, drawings, and paintings resonate with the landscapes and heritage that surrounded her, offering a unique interpretation of the Jura region.
For the occasion, the museum has chosen to dedicate one of its graphic arts rooms to this artist, allowing for a broader exploration of her work.
A second room is also dedicated to him, thanks to exceptional loans from the Friends of the Artist association, the Jura Departmental Council, and his family from the Jura region. While the majority of the pieces are displayed on the museum's second floor, some have been deliberately dispersed throughout other spaces, at strategic points along the visitor's path. This subtle arrangement creates interconnected meanings, weaves narratives between the works, and resonates with their exhibition space.
The echo continues until 2028
The renewal of the works on loan from the Frac Franche-Comté this year offers a unique opportunity to permanently link the two collections. Nearly thirty works are presented in the exhibition, and around twenty will remain on permanent display in the Abbey Museum's galleries until 2028.
The Frac Franche-Comté and the Abbey Museum
Founded in 1982, the Regional Contemporary Art Fund of Franche-Comté (FRAC Franche-Comté) is part of a network of 24 FRACs located throughout France. Its mission is to enable contemporary art to exist and circulate in every region of France by building an open and vibrant collection. Today, the FRAC Franche-Comté is recognized for the richness and diversity of its acquisitions, which are among the most dynamic in Europe.
For its part, the Abbey Museum in Saint-Claude, inaugurated in 2008 and designated a "Musée de France," is rooted in a unique history: that of a former monastery founded in the 4th century, whose archaeological remains are still visible in the basement. Its programming focuses on landscape issues, both natural and industrial, and showcases major figures of modern art and the Second School of Paris thanks to donations from artists Guy Bardone and René Genis.
Around them gravitate Picasso, Braque, Rebeyrolle, Buffet, Estève, Bonnard and Vuillard: so many figures who have marked the history of art and continue to nourish the museum's thinking.
By bringing these two institutions together, the Resonance exhibition affirms a common ambition: to create bridges between eras and aesthetics, to bring audiences closer to artistic creation and to foster a permanent dialogue between heritage and contemporary art.