LUMA Arles / 100 ans de Cahiers d’Art et LUMA Arles

In 2026, Cahiers d’Art celebrates its centenary with an international programme: exhibitions in prestigious museums, a jubilee publication, lectures and gatherings. These initiatives pay tribute to the lasting influence of the publication while reaffirming its founding ambition – to create a forum where the past, the present and the future of art enter into dialogue.

Since its foundation, Cahiers d’Art has played a decisive role in the intellectual history of modern and contemporary art. Its pages have gathered figures from art, writing and thought at the crucial moments of aesthetic change, shaping the way modern art has been discussed, interpreted and historicised. Today, its archives do not merely bear witness to that history: they constitute a living space from which the past can be revisited and reconsidered.

This perspective resonates with the approach of LUMA Arles’ Archives Vivantes programme, which views archives not as inert repositories, but as active systems that shape what can be remembered, interpreted and passed on.

The Cahiers d’Art archives presented at LUMA Arles reveal the moments that made modern and contemporary art legible, while bringing to light artists, ideas and geographies that remained on the margins. Revisiting them means confronting the foundations of how art is perceived, interpreted and valued. Reactivated, these archives become a place of renewed discovery, where forgotten images, experimental gestures and overlooked contributions unsettle established narratives and open new horizons for artistic knowledge.