Gallery of five continents
Paris, France
Établissement public du musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac
WILMOTTE & ASSOCIÉS ARCHITECTES
1,500 sqm
2025
Partial refurbishment of the Pavillon des Sessions and support for the Louvre to harmonize the museographic presentation and the display bases of the artworks
Twenty-five years after designing the layout and exhibition for the Pavillon des Sessions, Wilmotte & Associés has reimagined and transformed it into the Gallery of Five Continents. The fruit of a collaboration between the Louvre and the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, the newly remodelled exhibition space offers an unbounded approach to the global history of art by fostering discourse between disparate artworks, cultures, and time periods.
If the creation of the Pavillon des Sessions allowed art from African, Asian, Oceanic and American civilizations entrance into France’s largest cultural institution, the new Gallery of Five Continents now aims to amplify cross-cultural echoes.
It brings into dialogue one hundred and thirty pieces of our global cultural heritage from the collections of the Louvre, the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, and other cultural institutions, spanning diverse geographies and cultures, and interweaving manifold narratives of art and vernacular production.
The objects are brought into relation around major universal themes – the representation of power, forms of the sacred, views of the world and humanity’s relationship with the natural elements – all fundamental concepts which each culture has interpreted in its own way. These common threads reveal formal and symbolic connections between objects which hail from far-flung places and time periods.
The clarity of the original design by Wilmotte & Associés enables this new, open and universal interpretation of the pieces.
