This summer, Arles hums with the melody of creative revelation. Within its iconic streets and reimagined spaces, distinctive exhibitions transform the city into an enchanting canvas of artistry. At LUMA Arles, David Armstrong’s tender portraits echo a vanished New York, while “Sensing the Future” rekindles a groundbreaking fusion of art and technology. Across town, Michelangelo Pistoletto meets Lee Ufan in a meditative duet, Jia Yu’s photographs offer quiet acts of reciprocity, and “Ancestral Futures” reshapes Brazilian memory through ancestral and digital languages. Meanwhile, Maison Fragonard’s new fashion museum celebrates centuries of Arlesian elegance and the women who kept its traditions alive.
David Armstrong
Luma Arles
Parc des Ateliers
David Armstrong,
David Armstrong Archive;
“David, Boston,” Mid 1970s,
Vintage Gelatin Silver Print,
11 x 14 in;
Courtesy of the Estate of David Armstrong.
“Through thought-provoking and boundary-shifting works and ideas, we are reminded that art is a powerful and indispensable tool for questioning and reimagining our reality,” said Maja Hoffmann, Founder and Executive President of LUMA Foundation and LUMA Arles. In the depths of The Tower at LUMA Arles, a luminous reckoning with the past unfolds through the intimate and enduring vision of David Armstrong, who passed away in 2014. A graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in the 1970s, Armstrong emerged from the raw brilliance of the “Boston School” alongside Nan Goldin, Mark Morrisroe, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, and others. This Spring 2026 exhibition invites viewers into his world of blurred New York cityscapes and tender portraiture, where vulnerability meets defiance. A chronicler of his generation, he photographed friends, lovers, and fleeting landscapes during the AIDS crisis, crafting a visual elegy of softness, solitude, and shimmering truth.
“Through thought-provoking and boundary-shifting works and ideas, we are reminded that art is a powerful and indispensable tool for questioning and reimagining our reality,”
Maja Hoffmann
What we love: Armstrong’s photographs offer a vivid glimpse into a bygone city—capturing its spirit through the faces of dreamers and outsiders. His images reflect emotion, atmosphere, and the quiet magnetism of a place once alive with rebels, creators, and those searching for belonging.
David Armstrong at Luma Arles
July 5, 2025 – Spring 2026
Sensing the Future: Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.)
Luma Arles
Parc des Ateliers
Fog Sculpture, Pepsi Pavillion, Japan World Exposition 1970, Fujiko Nakaya, Getty Research Institute, © J. Paul Getty Trust.
Inside the industrial hush of Living Archives Gallery at LUMA Arles, “Sensing the Future” awakens a visionary union of mind and machine. Presented in partnership with the Getty Research Institute, it marks the first exhibition in France devoted to “Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.),” a revolutionary initiative founded in 1966 by Bell Telephone Laboratories engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer, alongside artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman. Featuring a parade of pioneering figures—among them John Cage, Fujiko Nakaya, Marta Minujín, and Andy Warhol—the show includes rare works and archival material from seminal projects like “9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering” and the 1970 Pepsi Pavilion in Osaka.
What we love: The must-see exhibition crackles with the electric thrill of a time when artists and engineers tore down boundaries, conjuring bold new worlds where sound, light, and motion became the raw materials of an untamed creative future.
Sensing the Future: Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) at Luma Arles
May 1, 2025 – January 11, 2026
Michelangelo Pistoletto and Lee Ufan: A Conversation Piece
Lee Ufan Arles
Hôtel Vernon, 5 Rue Vernon
A conversation piece:
Michelangelo Pistoletto and Lee Ufan in dialogue.
Photo by David Giancatarina.
Michelangelo Pistoletto,
“Io – Tu – Noi,” 2025,
Black painting,
Courtesy the artist.
Lee Ufan,
“Relatum – Accès,”
2022,
2 natural stones, 2 shadows painted on the floor, light bulb, gravel
180 x 226 cm,
Courtesy Lee Ufan Arles.
At Lee Ufan Arles this season, a quiet symphony unfolds as two singular artists, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Lee Ufan, are brought into visual dialogue for the first time. Born just years apart yet worlds away, the Italian Arte Povera pioneer and the Korean Mono-Ha philosopher converge in a spatial meditation at Hôtel Vernon. Their works, staged across the Espace MA and permanent collections, speak through elemental forms, mirrored surfaces, and restrained gestures. What emerges is a living reflection, an ever-shifting threshold where minimalism meets metaphysics and presence effervesces as poetry. “Art is not an object; it is a dialogue,” said Pistoletto. Curated by Erik Verhagen, the exhibition invites the viewer to complete the thought.
“Art is not an object; it is a dialogue,”
Michelangelo Pistoletto
What we love: This inaugural encounter between Pistoletto and Ufan brings together key works from the 1960s to today, including Pistoletto’s iconic mirrored cube Oggetti in meno and Ufan’s beguiling installations, bringing to light shared themes of impermanence and the infinite.
Michelangelo Pistoletto and Lee Ufan: A Conversation Piece at Lee Ufan Arles
June 25 – October 5, 2025
Jia Yu: Strangers
Rencontres d’Arles
Ground Control
Jia Yu. “The nomad Gunsang Wangmo and her mother,” filmed in the village of Tsatse, near Lake Gyaring, Strangers (Still), 2021.
Courtesy of the artist.
In the heart of Arles this summer, Jia Yu—2024 JIMEI × ARLES Discovery Award laureate—presents a quiet, resounding vision shaped by decades of devotion. A longtime elementary school art teacher in Xining, Qinghai, Jia Yu’s lens has chronicled the tender exchanges between Kham Tibetan herding communities and his own evolving identity. Returning decades-later portraits to their subjects, he received tsampa and rope in return—an economy of gratitude. These intimate, unadorned images are less documentation than communion, revealing photography as both gift and echo.
What we love: Jia Yu’s photographs become acts of reciprocity and remembrance that honor the dignity of everyday life. Captured over two decades in the Tibetan regions of Yushu and Xining, they are now exhibited for the first time in Europe at Rencontres d’Arles 2025.
Jia Yu: Strangers at Rencontres d’Arles
July 5 – October 5, 2025
Ancestral Futures: Brazilian Contemporary Scene
Rencontres d’Arles
Église des Trinitaires
“Ancestral Futures,
Contemporary Brazilian Scene.” Mayara Ferrão. “The Wedding,” from “The Album of Oblivion,” 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
“Ancestral Futures,
Contemporary Brazilian Scene.” Rafa Bqueer. Image from the film “Themônias,” 2021.
Courtesy of the artist / Instituto Moreira Salles.
Inside a centuries-old chapel in Arles, “Ancestral Futures” conjures a bold and resonant gathering of Brazilian visionaries reshaping collective memory. Melding image, code, and ritual, artists including Denilson Baniwa, Ventura Profana, and Yhuri Cruz channel ancestral knowledge through AI, collage, and video—disrupting imposed narratives and revealing erased lineages. Referencing Ailton Krenak’s Indigenous philosophies, the exhibition reclaims time as nonlinear, sacred, and alive. Divine cloaks reappear, bodies become sovereign archives, and forgotten saints are honored through acts of image-making. These radical gestures, poetic and political, generate new mythologies rooted in resistance, intimacy, and community stewardship across generations.
What we love: Gê Viana reworks archival images into bold collages that challenge colonial legacies, while Mayara Ferrão uses AI and photography to explore Afro-Brazilian femininity and spiritual inheritance.
Ancestral Futures: Brazilian Contemporary Scene at Rencontres d’Arles
July 7 – August 31, 2025
Musée de la Mode et du Costume
Maison Fragonard
Hotel Bouchaud de Bussy, 16 Rue de la Calade
Musée de la Mode et du Costume Maison Fragonard, ARCHITECTURE © François Deladerrière – Fragonard Parfumeur.
This July in Arles, the storied Hôtel Bouchaud de Bussy reawakened as the Musée de la Mode et du Costume, unveiling centuries of sartorial heritage. Once a private trove of Arlesian attire gathered by Odile Pascal and her mother Magali, the collection found its sanctuary through the stewardship of Anne, Agnès, and Françoise Costa of Maison Fragonard. Guided by heritage architect Nathalie d’Artigues and transformed by Studio KO, the 17th- and 18th-century mansion now pairs historical integrity with contemporary elegance. From rare 1600s garments to ornate accessories, each piece offers a vivid thread through the evolving artistry, craftsmanship, and identity of Provence’s fashion legacy.
What we love: In a specially created video for the museum, artist Charles Fréger reveals the time-honored attire traditions of women in Arles, capturing their seasonal preparations as a flowing performance of movement and care, with radiant silhouettes enhancing the enduring legend of the elusive Arlésienne.
