The Luxe amer exhibition opens on May 23, 2026, at the Château-Musée de Saumur, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Loi Taubira. This landmark law, passed in 2001, recognizes slavery and the slave trade as crimes against humanity. Organized by the Fondation pour la Mémoire de l’esclavage and the French Ministry of Culture, the exhibition highlights the ongoing impact of slavery on society and its presence in museum collections. Focusing on decorative arts, Luxe amer examines how colonialism and the slave trade influenced European history. Luxe amer 2001-2026 at Chateau de Saumur is scheduled for 23 May to 29 November 2026 at Esplanade Hubert Landais, Saumur, France.
Tag: arts-crafts
Fête du Four à pains de Coispéan in La Turballe
The Fête du Four à pains de Coispéan celebrates a modest but meaningful piece of rural heritage: the village bread oven. Around La Turballe and the Guérande countryside, ovens like this once marked shared time, local food habits and neighborhood cooperation. The event keeps that memory tangible through baking, gathering and the simple pleasure of warm bread made in a traditional setting. Its interest lies precisely in its scale: visitors encounter heritage through smell, taste, conversation and a place that still carries community value. The celebration also shows how food traditions can preserve rural identity without becoming a formal exhibition.
Exposition – L’habit fait la Bretagne in Le Pouliguen
L’habit fait la Bretagne invites visitors to read Breton identity through clothing, color and rural representation. Presented at the Musée Bernard Boesch in Le Pouliguen, the exhibition looks toward Ar-Goat, the inland Brittany of villages, fields and traditional dress, through costumes, paintings, ceramics and everyday objects. Rather than treating dress as folklore frozen in time, it shows how fabric, headwear, accessories and silhouettes express belonging, social memory and attachment to place. For a Pays de la Loire audience, the exhibition is especially relevant because Loire-Atlantique remains a living crossroads of Breton culture. It gives context to the dances, festivals and community gatherings where costume still carries meaning today.
Exposition – Les pouvoirs du sel in Batz-sur-Mer
At the Musée des Marais Salants, Les pouvoirs du sel connects a familiar mineral to the culture of the Guérande salt country. The exhibition explores salt as food, preservative, protective substance, symbol and working material, while keeping the paludier landscape at the center of the visit. In Batz-sur-Mer, the subject is inseparable from the marshes, the seasonal rhythm of harvesting and the vocabulary of an inherited trade. The result is a regional story told through gestures, tools, beliefs and domestic uses rather than through spectacle. It is a strong stop for anyone wanting to understand why salt remains one of the clearest markers of identity on this Atlantic edge of Pays de la Loire.
Peindre la lumière. Le vitrail en Sarthe 19e–21e siècles in Le Mans
Set inside the Carré Plantagenêt, Peindre la lumière brings Sarthe’s stained-glass heritage into focus through works and documents spanning the 19th to the 21st century. The exhibition treats vitrail not simply as decoration, but as a local craft shaped by workshops, churches, public buildings and the changing language of light. For visitors interested in regional culture, it offers a careful look at the hands, materials and artistic choices behind windows that often become part of a town’s memory without being fully noticed. Its Le Mans setting gives the subject a strong local anchor: the city’s historic fabric, religious heritage and museum collections help tell a story of craft transmission, restoration and contemporary creation in western France.