Exposition : "Michel Butor, portrait ultrasensible"

From 19 October 2026 to 3 February 2027, Université Paris Cité and its Musée d'Histoire de la Médecine explore the links between science and poetry in the exhibition "Michel Butor, portrait ultrasensible", held in association with the PhotoSaintGermain festival. Alongside the artists' books of Michel Butor and his photographer friends, discover the scientific works that inspired him and left their mark on the history of science.

In partnership with the PhotoSaintGermain festival and to mark the Centenary of Michel Butor and the Bicentenary of photography, celebrated by the Ministry of Culture, Université Paris Cité and its Musée d'Histoire de la Médecine invite you to discover a previously unseen side of this emblematic figure of the Nouveau Roman.

With dialogue between the arts as the driving force behind his work, Michel Butor explored the essay, poetry and also photography from 1951 to 1961, before creating artists' books with his photographer friends. Together with them, he produced nearly 1,800 books in very small editions, either printed or handwritten.

The poet's imagination draws on a sensory material all his own, as well as on his encyclopaedic and humanist erudition, which extends across the arts and the sciences. Butor invites us to look at scientific books differently, uncovering the visual and textual poetry specific to them. This exhibition sets out to bring correspondences back into play, pairing Butor's artists' books and those of his photographer friends with works or scientific objects from Université Paris Cité that made history and remain remarkable. Old and rare, they bear witness to the state of research at the time, to the birth of disciplines and to a body of knowledge that evolves over time.

Accompanying the exhibition, the catalogue-book "Michel Butor, portrait ultrasensible" offers nine short, previously unpublished essays, accessible to a general readership, enriched by a rich, annotated illustration section, in order to discover his literary personality.

Exhibition curator: Agathe Sanjuan (Deputy Directorate General for Libraries and Museums, DGDBM, Université Paris Cité)

Scientific curators: Elisabeth Collin-Canto (DGDBM, Université Paris Cité) and Nicolas Barbey (DGDBM, Université Paris Cité)