Our miniseries rounding up the best summer exhibitions along the French Riviera finishes in Cannes, where diversity is the name of the game.
This cultural summer of 2025 is special. Never before has the French Riviera seen such star-powered exhibitions in Nice and Monaco. Needless to say that Cannes, too, has pulled out all the stops. But while its bigger neighbours rely on visiting brand names like Picasso, Dalí, and Kandinsky for pull, Cannes has decided to stay true to its identity of a “global village” between red carpet and local history.
What emerges from this summer’s cultural programming is a fascinating cultural kaleidoscope: literary detective work on royal mystery alongside cutting-edge film artistry, African folk traditions placed on equal footing with contemporary French sculpture, whimsically provocative installations that challenge perceptions of life and death, and even a submerged eco-museum that turns the sea into a cultural canvas.
Marcel Pagnol et le Secret du Masque de fer | Musée du Masque de Fer et du Fort Royal on Île Sainte-Marguerite | Through 31 August, 2025
While locals know Marcel Pagnol as a chronicler of Provençal life, few are aware of his detailed inquiry into the Man in the Iron Mask, a figure central to the cultural identity of Cannes and its surroundings. Dedicated to his research, the exhibition Marcel Pagnol and the Secret of the Iron Mask at the Fort Royal Museum on the outlying island of St. Marguerite brings to light this lesser-known chapter of his legacy.
Convinced the masked captive was the illegitimate half-brother of Louis XIV – the secret son of Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin – Marcel Pagnol lent fresh weight to a theory rooted in dynastic intrigue and royal scandal. What makes this investigation particularly compelling is that Pagnol conducted his research at the height of his career, largely in the same isolated fortress where the prisoner was held for eleven years.
Letters, photographs, and personal objects, among them his writing set and a never-before-seen image he took of the prisoner’s cell, retrace how he immersed himself in the mystery, even considering underwater exploration in search of lost evidence. Why does this investigation matter to contemporary audiences? It demonstrates how sustained, methodical research – the kind that required physical presence and deep archival work – could yield insights that remain elusive even in our age of instant information access.
L’Art de James Cameron | Musée éphémère du cinéma | Through 24 August, 2025
The James Cameron exhibition at Cannes’s Musée éphémère du cinéma in the Palais des Festivals challenges the notion of film as mere entertainment by exposing the director’s obsessive fusion of invention and artistry. Through an immersive journey comprising six thematic zones and over 300 original items – including drawings, pastels, paintings, props, costumes, photographs and 3D devices – the show maps Cameron’s evolution from a young dreamer fascinated by science fiction and surrealism.
It follows his trajectory into a relentless exploration of human-machine boundaries and unknown worlds. It dissects the painstaking research behind Titanic alongside the unsettling beauty of his hybrid creatures where biological form meets technological fantasy. The exhibition culminates in the vivid, untamed environments of Avatar, where nature and synthetic life engage in a delicate, sometimes uneasy balance. Far from a simple tribute, this presentation reveals Cameron’s determination to expand cinema’s language, making the Musée éphémère du cinéma a fitting stage for this rare glimpse into one of contemporary film’s most uncompromising visionaries.
The art of hitting the bull’s eye! Carved Slingshots from West Africa | Musée des explorations du monde | Through 2 November, 2025
This small and unassuming museum is a little off the beaten path and requires a steep climb up the Suquet hill, but once you push open its doors – oh my, what treasures it holds! It is one of the few museums in France to conserve and exhibit objects from all six inhabited continents.
The permanent African collection is especially impressive, featuring an exceptional selection of art from sub-Saharan Africa, including statuary, masks and musical instruments. It also invariably pulls an ace out its sleeve every summer. This year’s special event L’art de faire mouche! offers an unprecedented immersion into the world of West African slingshots.
In West Africa, notably Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana, slingshots have a long tradition. Typically handmade from carved wood and rubber strips, they are used by children and elders to protect crops from voracious birds and other predators, and sometimes to hunt for small game. But beyond practical application, their owners also believe in the tool’s talismanic powers and go to great lengths to adorn them artistically. Exquisitely carved figures – human, animal, masked, or metaphorical – often evoke a proverb or situation, expressing the owner’s hopes or beliefs. The slingshot is often handed down from father to son, also serving as an ancestral keepsake. The eighty beautiful and well-curated objects on display give a rare glimpse into a humble yet fascinating tool which has long escaped the gaze of Western art dealers and historians.
Jean-Michel Othoniel, La Poussière d’Etoiles | La Malmaison | Through January 4, 2026
Jean‑Michel Othoniel’s Starlight Made Solid at La Malmaison in Cannes presents a carefully composed installation of blown-glass sculptures, each bead gilded or tinted with subtle colour. The work explores the cosmic origins of gold, drawing on scientific theories that this precious metal is born from distant supernovae. The sculptures form sweeping arcs and vertical structures within the gallery, interacting with the architecture to create a measured dialogue between space, material, and light.
By extending gilded elements onto La Malmaison’s façade and along La Croisette, Othoniel connects the exhibition physically and symbolically to Cannes, acknowledging the city’s cinematic heritage and establishing an artistic dialogue between the gallery’s interior contemplation and the city’s public spaces.
Corine Borgnet – The Last Dance | Suquet des Artistes | Through 21 September, 2025
Corine Borgnet favours heterogeneous materials, and her works offer a singular, offbeat aesthetic. From resin to post-it notes, from poultry bones to everyday objects, the artist creates a veritable contemporary cabinet of curiosities. Playing on the codes of vanity, she subverts social conventions to deliver an incisive and poetic reflection on our quest for identity and our relationship with death, love and power.
Hosting the Parisian artist’s thought-provoking sculptures in the Suquet des Artistes is a particularly poignant choice. Prior to becoming an art venue, this space long served as the city’s morgue. It’s deliberately clinical-looking interior lends itself to exhibitions that in some way serve as reminders of the transience of things. Fortunately, colourful, whimsical, and poetic shows like this one also celebrate the joy of life.
Écomusée sous-marin | Plage, Île Sainte-Marguerite | Permanent
Not all art is confined to walls and indoor spaces, and in this Year of the Ocean, the pioneering Écomusée sous-marin rightfully claims its place among the region’s main attractions. It breaks with convention by placing art where few expect to find it: beneath the sea. In 2020, British artist Jason deCaires Taylor created six monumental sculptures, each between three and five metres tall and cast from the faces of local residents. Now submerged, they serve marine life as artificial reefs, enriching the coastal ecosystem while subtly redefining how culture is encountered.
The Écomusée embodies a bold cultural statement: that the sea, integral to Cannes’ identity, can also be a space for artistic and environmental experimentation. Beneath the surface of the Mediterranean, art becomes an act of stewardship, inviting those who snorkel to this fascinating underwater park to witness the delicate balance between human invention and the natural world.
For all its reputation as rich and genteel, Cannes reveals itself this summer as something more accessible: a city that effortlessly draws together styles, artists, genres and generations. What sets it apart is how naturally these expressions coexist. Here, art and culture do not perform for tourists but invite genuine engagement. “Hollywood-by-the-Med” never forgets its roots as a humble fishing village and makes a conscious effort to keep culture open to the people who live here, not just the bejewelled elite. And that is precisely where Cannes sets itself apart: in choosing authenticity over spectacle, and connection over performance.
“Cannes was born from the kiss of the sea to the sun”
– Frédéric Mistral, Provençal poet
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Lead image © Natja Igney; all other images as credited