How a New Generation of Paris Gallerists Has Changed the City’s Art Scene

Paris is a city steeped in art history. Today, the French capital has a huge density of galleries, as well as a rich well of longstanding institutions and private museums such as the Pinault Collection and the Fondation Louis Vuitton. People no longer visit Paris just to go to the Louvre, but to see exceptional contemporary art exhibitions, too. While the local grisaille et grève—gray skies and strikes—may persist, there is a sunny outlook on the Paris scene.

There are three main centers of art world activity in the city: the old-world 6th arrondissement (Saint-Germain-des-Prés), the wealthy 8th arrondissement (Avenue Matignon), and the creative epicenter of the Marais, which encompasses the 3rd and 4th arrondissements.

Several wider developments have taken place in recent years. Since the U.K. left the European Union in 2020, a crop of international galleries opened, such as White Cube in 2020, Mariane Ibrahim in 2021, and Hauser & Wirth in 2023. Art Basel also launched the fair Paris+ in 2022, raising the city’s global art world profile further.

There has also been a new wave of young galleries, many of which are using an international lens to curate their programming. Christophe Person opened his namesake gallery specializing in African art in December 2022, prior to which he’d been working for French auction house Piasa, inaugurating its department for contemporary African art. Today, the market for African art is “really within the mainstream,” he said, citing interest from collectors, institutions, and private foundations.

“The relationship between France and Africa is very strong, but it’s very charged,” Person said. “But especially for the artists from the Francophone countries, they’ve got this link to France and Paris, I think they are happy to have the opportunity to be shown here.”

193 Gallery, with two spaces on Rue Béranger in the Haut Marais, was founded in 2018 by César Levy to explore non-Western identities from the Caribbean, Latin America, Asia, and Africa. He noted that, in addition to the behemoth Paris+, there’s a spectrum of fairs catering to different regions and tastes. “There’s a fair dedicated to African art [AKAA], to Asian art [ASIA NOW], and there’s a new fair coming in September dedicated to Latin American art [MIRA Art Fair],” he said. “There’s this desire to discover different art scenes of the world.” In a more generalist display, next week will see the opening of Art Paris (April 4th–7th) at the Grand Palais Éphémère, bringing together 136 modern and contemporary art galleries from 25 countries for its 26th edition.

Scott Billy, who is American-born but lived in South Africa for 25 years, owned a company selling condoms and a nonprofit providing free HIV services before opening Bonne Espérance Gallery in the 2nd arrondissement, neighboring the Marais, in 2019. “Paris has got a great African art scene, but it’s almost entirely focused on Western Africa, and it’s a big continent,” he told Artsy. “The South African art scene is quite different.” He noted that “the three best advocates for African arts are New York, London, Paris. New York and London already have [a] South African presence. Paris has no South African presence. That’s the business reason. The real reason was just because I love Paris.”

Bim Bam Gallery, opened by Baimba Kamara (also on rue Béranger), started as a pop-up four years ago on rue Saint Claude in the 3rd arrondissement and found its permanent space further north a year ago. “I was able to limit my risk,” Kamara explained of the move. “It allows people with less income at the beginning to be able to start, and then you have the chance to grow; I could still be on the market and find my audience.” Kamara, who is French-born, used to live in California and loved the Oakland artists he encountered, realizing that, while they had burgeoning careers in the U.S., they had no visibility in Europe. He is especially keen to show LGBTQ+ artists and is open about discussing representation in general, being one of the very few Black gallery directors in Paris. “I feel like there are more galleries showing artists who talk about what’s happening now in our society.”

Also on rue Béranger is DS Galerie, which settled into a permanent address in March 2023. “Paris is an important place for contemporary art. It’s having a moment where the scene has captured the interest of the public,” said the gallery’s founder Thomas Havet. From 2016 to 2022, Havet helmed a nomadic curatorial project, Double Séjour, which first started in his apartment and ended up in POUSH—an industrial campus on the outskirts of Paris housing some 250 artist studios—in 2021. He sees a kind of “positivity” emerging from a more skeptically leaning French culture, rising from “the conjunction of emerging artists and interested international collectors.”

The fact that three of the newest Paris galleries are neighbors speaks to the way the Marais is a touchstone of the scene. “Paris is super geographical for galleries, and people are super strict about it,” Kamara noted. “Technically, I’m at République but I would never say that in a gallery context—it’s Haut Marais. You have to be in the Marais, it’s where things are happening.”

The ambitious scope of the Paris scene is clear, he added: “Every year you can do a list of other shows that you missed. Great shows I wanted to go, I meant to go, and I did not. The list is huge every year. The spectrum is just too much. If you’re trying to do your homework with galleries, you’re missing the museums. If you do the museums, you’re missing the galleries.”

Further afield in the city, Anna Nevicka, who moved to Paris from Latvia 10 years ago, partnered with Olivier Maréchal from a previous professional experience, opening OA Fine Art two years ago. “Paris is still a very prestigious address,” Nevicka said. “New York or London, they’re much bigger hubs—Paris has always had this luxury, and very secretive ambiance with it.” She noted that most of the galleries in the 8th arrondissement, where their space is located, feature “modern masters, beginning of 20th century, even older—17th, and so on.”

Nevicka added that there has been a “generational” change in the culture of the city: “I do find that over the last decade, French culture and cultural organizations have been much more open to new things.”

Back in the Marais, Maât Gallery, opened by Paris-born Franco-Egyptian gallerist Paul William, offers exhibitions as well as one-month residencies. William first opened NIL Gallery in the Marais with a childhood friend, where they focused on West African artists principally from Ghana and the Ivory Coast; a little over a year ago, he decided to start his own project. “Since art from the African continent had become a big trend—and I’m glad it’s emerging—I wanted to open up the scope and focus on Latin American artists because they’re not well known here,” he said.