Synopsis of the exhibition

Napoleon was a genius of propaganda, eager to stage his own legend. Many painters have served his cause … By bringing together these works for the first time, the exhibition reveals a vast communication campaign.

Through a selection of 40 emblematic works, discover the myth that Napoleon built, and the legend he left:

• His rise, his battles, his coronation, his official portraits, his fall
• The highlights of his reign, painted on monumental canvases
• The dark legend of Napoleon, the one that history preferred to forget

In an invented 3D architecture, inspired by the Invalides and neoclassical architecture, stroll through the rooms of the virtual exhibition to discover the masterpieces of Napoleonic history ….

About the institution

UMA is proud to have fully curated and produced the exhibition “Napoleon, Myth and Legend”. Beneficiary of the “Napoleon Year” Label, the exhibition celebrates the bicentenary of Napoleon’s death and joins the major players in this commemoration, starting with the Fondation Napoléon, which contributes to the promotion of the event.

This exhibition was curated byJean Vergès, director of UMA.

We warmly thank Thierry Lentz, director of the Fondation Napoléon, for his participation in the project, as well as Emma Janin Sartor, for writing and translating the notices.

Synopsis of the exhibition

Discover the largest panorama of the History of Art in the French collections! “Renaissance in the XX7th Century” offers you a unique selection of works from the collections of 64 French museums, presented in virtual reality.

UMA offers you:

• An exhibition spanning nearly six centuries of Western painting
• A daring 3D scenography, free from all constraints
• Eleven themes, from portrait to storyboard; from the landscape to the representation of the body.

The exhibition offers a collection of an exceptional diversity, in a historical and geographical perspective. The issue is not exhaustiveness but the representativeness of the most important eras and schools in the history of art. From the great masters of the Renaissance to the first impressionists, the visitor will be able to discover a panorama of the artistic trends, and appreciate the diversity of French collections.

About the institution

“From the Renaissance to the 20th century, masterpieces of painting in French collections” realized in partnership with the Club-Innovation-Culture, was made possible thanks to the support of the RMN-Grand Palais.

UMA sends its deepest gratitude to Pascal Bonafoux, Professor Emeritus of Art History, for his advice and vision. We would also like to thank the Institut français and the magazine Connaissance des Arts, which carried out several mediation and dissemination operations alongside us. The wealth of its partners allowed UMA to offer an unprecedented and unique exhibition in France.

Finally, we would like to thank Philippine Lambla and Pierre Demerliac for writing the texts that punctuate this exhibition.

Press Release

Synopsis of the exhibition

Notre-Dame de Paris is a sanctuary: fundamentally religious, national above all. Iconic, silent witness of our History, reservoir of the dreams of artists and passers-by, its 850 years made it a central symbol of the French imagination. About sixty works, from the Middle Ages to the present day, survey this history. From Jean Fouquet’s Illuminations to the sharp features of Bernard Buffet, the exhibition carries the developments of the cathedral in its heart and in the artistic landscape.

You will discover:

• A free and contemporary 3D reconstruction of the Cathedral, like an architectural framework that evokes its essence
• Sixty works, testimonies of the power of Notre-Dame over creation and the imagination

After its construction in the 12th century, this masterpiece of Gothic architecture was quickly disowned for its barbaric appearance. It only becomes an anecdotal, trivial, occasional subject of artists landscapes. It is with the Coronation of Napoleon, painted by David, and especially the Victor Hugo’s novel, that it eventually finds grace in the eyes of the French and in the colors of painters. Now firmly anchored in Parisian landscape, it became a geometric volume, subject to variations in light, an object of exceptional representation for the painters of the Avant-Garde. Thereafter, it will never stop populate the dreamlike universes of Matisse, Picasso, Delaunay or even Chagall.

With this exhibition, UMA pays homage to Notre-Dame.

More than a building, an idea, a fantasy.

About the institution

Synopsis of the exhibition

Only a few works remain today from Leonardo’s genius. And the privilege of virtual reality is its ability to bring them all together in one place. For the first time, we offer you the opportunity to confront the different Madonna of the Rocks or the three Madonnas, to admire each detail of the Mona Lisa or the Last Supper.

You will find  :

• Seventeen of the artist’s paintings signed by his hand (although some are debated)
• 3D architecture inspired by a palace designed by Leonardo. A way to give life to preparatory studies of Leonardo and his talents of architect.
• Some emblematic objects of the inventor Leonardo: a war machine, evoking his career as a military engineer, as well as his famous flying machine.

The diversity of Leonardo da Vinci’s knowledge and activities makes synthesis impossible … UMA has therefore chosen to present his painted work, throwing hundreds of anatomical and engineering drawings to the ground, town planning, mathematics, and studies of phenomena of all kinds. Creative effervescence, fiery and unbridled, is essential to grasp the breadth of his genius. So here it is spread,

offered to everyone’s curiosity. “The painter must strive to be universal” he said. His genius was greedy for infinity, launched forward, to beyond his century and the following centuries. This virtual reality exhibition attempts to perpetuate this heritage, thanks to the use of new technologies and a demanding artistic curation.

About the institution

UMA is proud to have fully directed and produced this exhibition. Celebrating the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo, he keeps embodying humanism and transversality of knowledge. To his genius we pay  a boundless admiration. His work, accessible to the general public, is the opportunity to create an exhibition that only virtual reality allows.

Synopsis of the exhibition

For the first time, 75 works, from ancient Egypt to the present day, are gathered around the cat! Big cats, small cats, cuddly cats or playful cats, tiger cats or kittens, all of them gathered in the decor of a fantasized 18th century private mansion.

Come, let yourself be seduced by the felines and discover:

• Cats hidden in all the tables, it’s up to you to find them!
• Moments of tenderness immortalized by the artists
• Cats that infiltrate domestic or religious scenes
• The fabulous felines, magical and magical!

UMA traces the history of the cat and its symbols: if religious painting relates it to Satan, it was revered as a benevolent and maternal deity, Bastet, in ancient Egypt. Presence

accustomed to artists’ studios, it represents the freedom and independence of the painter. But he is also a sensual and sulfurous symbol, often hidden in the portraits of young girls or women, even in the famous “Olympia” of Manet of which he embodies all the voluptuousness.

Object of adoration or superstition? Predator to fear or companion to cuddle? Black cat, angora cat, shabby or luxurious, the feline has a personality as complex as the illustrious palettes who represented them.

About the institution

This exhibition, produced in partnership with the Réunion de Musées Nationaux – Grand Palais, is a virtual exhibition adaptation of the e-book of the same name published by the RMN-GP. The RMN-GP holds a set of unique know-how in the artistic and cultural field: organization of exhibitions, reception of the public, cultural and digital mediation, edition of books, management of museum shops, art workshops, photographic agency, acquisitions of works of art for national collections, hosting major exhibitions and events …

UMA and the RMN share the same ambition: to allow the meeting of the greatest number with art – the art of all cultures, all eras, and in all its forms … naturally that this partnership was born.

Finally, we would like to thank Mathilde Louette, for writing the room texts and the notices

which punctuate this exhibition.

Press Release

Synopsis of the exhibition

UMA offers you the first fully digital edition of the Urban Art Fair! The health crisis that hit the world in the winter of 2020 prevented the holding of all trade shows, fairs and exhibitions. Urban Art Fair refused to simply cancel its show . Instead, and for the first time, the galleries and artists who responded to the 2020 edition were mobilized to offer collectors and the public a 100% digital preview of the fair.

In an urban setting, reproducing a veritable open-air gallery, discover the key works of the 2020 edition of Uban Art Fair.

About the institution

UMA is proud to present this exhibition, produced in partnership with Urban Art Fair, following the cancellation of its 2020 edition. Urban Art Fair naturally turned to UMA, to renew a collaboration already established with the exhibition “Walk Into Street Art”, thus allowing the public to discover a selection of the most emblematic pieces of the edition of Urban Art Fair 2020.

Synopsis of the exhibition

What better tool than a caricature or a print to take the pulse of society? Illustrations of press, satirical drawing or caricature, experienced an unprecedented boom in the 19th century. While the press is becoming more and more accessible thanks to the industrialization of printing, graphic satire takes his flight to divert, through humor, current affairs, society and ideas.

Visit “Humor, a weapon of mass distribution” and discover

• An exceptional scenography, in the fantasized streets of Paris.
• A vast panorama of caricature, in three themes: Power, Religion and Society.
• Events that made the history of the French press, from the Dreyfus affair to the attacks on Charlie Hebdo, including French most famous puppet show.
• A French specialty: between art and politics, caricature is probably the most militant of all our arts.

In that respect, Bertrand Tillier, author of several university books and participant to the exhibition, writes: “the cartoonish image strives to go beyond the bounds of the plausible and morals and relentlessly cross the boundaries of the acceptable and the ridiculous. This is its productive part, and that is why it is as much an image as an act. ”

About the institution

This exhibition was produced in partnership with RetroNews website, a, incredibly rich platform, bringing together press archives. We warmly thank the BNF and Gallica for their support, which was essential to the building of this exhibition. UMA would also like to address its gratitude to Mr. Bertrand Tillier, professor of history at Sorbonne University. His participation in writing the content shed new light on carricature, and his supervision was invaluable in the organization of our exhibition.

Finally, we would like to thank Eglantine Ponse and Nancy Ba for their involvement and their efficiency in the realization of this project.

Synopsis of the exhibition

Who never dreamt of discovering the greatest masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance? Nested in the churches and palaces of Italy, these works have shaped the course of history and have changed forever our way of painting.

UMA immerses you in an original and modern architecture, where you will discover:

• Ten masterpieces by ten masters of the Italian Renaissance gathered in one place
• Rooms dedicated to Italian primitives, the High Renaissance and Venetian painters
• An unprecedented confrontation of the geniuses of the time

An unprecedented period of artistic emulation, stylistic innovations roam the peninsula in only a few years: the House of Spouses by Andrea Mantegna dialogues with the Stanzas of Raphael in Vaticano; Michelangelo and Leonardo confront their genius; the Sistine Chapel shakes the Venetian painting.

UMA embraces this theme by designing an unreal space, where the emblematic churches and palaces are punctuated by resolutely contemporary architecture. The 10 most emblematic works of art of the Renaissance, from Giotto to Correggio, are thus confronted. The perspective, the color, anatomy, composition enter a whirlwind of modernity that will forever mark the History of Art

About the institution

UMA is proud to have fully directed and produced this exhibition. It is the result of an editorial desire to cover a subject of interest to the public, that only virtual reality allows. “The Lives of the Italian Renaissance” was produced with the curatorship of Jean Vergès, director of UMA, also responsible for content writing

Synopsis of the exhibition

Klimts, Renoir, Manets … Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazis engaged in a real looting throughout Europe. The Raubkunst, an organized dispossession aiming to confiscate from their owners over 400,000 works of art.

UMA offers you a historical exhibition. In an original scenography, discover the greatest spoilt  masterpieces of World War II.

In this exhibition, you will discover:

• The journey of each object, its history and that of its trip to the Nazi warehouses until it is returned.

• A symbolic reconstruction of the highest places of spoliation, from the Shoah memorial going to collectors’ apartments

• An original reconstruction of the Room of Martyrs, the Jeu de Paume room where stored the so-called degenerate works of art.

This exhibition touches our common history, our collective memory. These works that you will see bear the mark of a trauma that is still burning our consciousness. Take time to reflect, remember, and above all appreciate the beauty of these exceptional works.

About the institution

This exhibition was produced in partnership with the HARP (Holocaust Art Restitution Project), with the curating of Ori Z. Soltes, professor of Hebrew civilization at Georgetown University, and Marc J. Masurovsky, historian specializing in questions of spoliation and co-founder of HARP.

Synopsis of the exhibition

UMA pays tribute to graffiti with the precious photos of Henri Chalfant. These trains, painted illegally in the early 1980s, have since been repainted, destroyed or replaced. It is only thanks to these pictures that we still keep track of them.

Subway Art recreates in virtual reality these old New York R38 trains which turned, thanks to their graffiti, into incredible works of art. Discover the works of pioneers like Futura 2000, Blade, Seen, Crash or Lee.

UMA offers you:

• A station where trains, placed side by side, have long formed an open-air museum. A unique museum, which only virtual reality can find.
• The story of a controversial art, sometimes denigrated and immortalized by Henri Chalfant, an exceptional photographer

Plunge into the undergrounds New York subway, through Chalfant’s lens you will see ten works covering the sides of each car.

About the institution

This exhibition, produced jointly with “Walk Into Street Art”, was produced with the participation of Henry Chalfant. We send him our deepest gratitude. Renowned photographer and director, he specialized in the art of graffiti, of which he is today a benchmark. His work on American pop culture and its urbanity has aroused the admiration of UMA and Yannick Boesso, curator of the exhibition “Walk Into Street Art”.

We would like to thank Henry Chalfant for sharing these works with us, and for showing us his support in organizing this magnificent exhibition

Press Release

Synopsis of the exhibition

It is not easy to grasp the outlines and spot the main artists of Street Art. And yet, established since nearly fifty years on five continents, Street Art is one of the greatest artistic movements of our time. Driven by a perpetual quest for legitimacy with museums as pioneers of graffiti, urban art is characterized by its codes, its diversity, its popularity and its anchoring in the present. It is a prism of reflection accessible to all.

In a city created entirely for the exhibition, discover:

• A journey beyond the constraints of reality.
• The iconic walls of Banksy, JR, Obey, Jef Aérosol, Ernest Pignon Ernest alongside pioneering street art graffiti and historic New York trains from the years
• The history and values ​​of Street Art, a movement committed to the environment and humanism rooted in a deeply urban identity

In a virtual and universal museum, how do you select works – walls, more precisely – and be sure that they are representative of the movement? It is not possible. History does not give us enough perspective to extract the essence.

A “Walk Into Street Art” is a non-exhaustive parenthesis, a window. We catch a glimpse of the desire to make works and their contexts interact by broadening the artists’ purpose towards a universal meaning.

About the institution

This exhibition was produced in partnership with Urban Art Fair, with the curatorship of Yannick Boesso. UMA warmly thanks all the artists who allowed us to use the reproduction of their works, and in particular Philippe Bonan for his portrait gallery, and Henry Chalfant for his collaboration with Subway Art.

This exhibition was presented for the first time during the 2018 edition of the Urban Art Fair.

Press Release

Synopsis of the exhibition

UMA is committed to presenting contemporary artists. “Memories Paper” exhibition, devoted to the work of Nathalie Boutté, sheds light on the work of an exceptional artist. Composed of several thousand strips of paper, the works of Nathalie Boutté present the faces of anonymous. Photographed between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th, they are remembered to us with striking nuances and subtlety.

Visit “Memories Paper” to discover a series of iconic works by the artist, brought together for the first time, and admire :

• An extraordinary work, made of collages and entanglement of letters, between sculpture and drawing
• Portraits of African-Americans, taken from the Rufus W. Holsinger Photographic Collection
• Extremely rich notices written by the artist herself

Nathalie Boutté is a sensitive, manual artist. She manipulates paper, text, typographic gray, inks. She draws with words, writes with photos or paints with paper. Her art is unique, between text and image; the daguerreotype and the pixel; between the past and the future.

Her work is always a rebirth, his technique still learning. No certainty, no truth, always one more experience, one more step.

About the institution

Produced in partnership with the Magnin-A gallery, “Memories Paper” presents an emblematic selection of the work of Nathalie Boutté. We warmly thank her for drafting the instructions and writing the texts accompanying this exhibition.

UMA also expresses its gratitude to Mr. Philippe Boutté, Pauline Giroux and André Magnin for their support and help in carrying out this project.

Synopsis of the exhibition

What if the founding myths were still relevant today? Although they were written thousands of years ago, they keep inspiring us, and inspiring artists. Their stories of wars, exile, or love are the foundations of our culture, all over the world.

In virtual reality, discover the works illustrating great human epics, which, despite the distance, offer curious similarities:

• The Ramayana, illustrated by Indian miniatures
• Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, illustrated by Mimmo Paladino
• The Aeneid of Virgil, illustrated by the fresco and the ancient mosaic
• Ovid’s Metamorphoses, illustrated by Baroque painting
• The Apocalypse of Saint John, illustrated by the Angers tapestry

In Valmiki’s Ramayana or Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, exile, wars, love are one immense song. Song taken up a few centuries later by Virgil in the Aeneid, while Ovid explores in his Metamorphosis the depths of the soul and the actions of man. Meanwhile, Saint John receives his visions of the Apocalypse and prophesies the annihilation and the salvation of the man. This mythological base is the fundament of our representations and our humanity.

About the institution

This exhibition was produced in partnership with the editions Diane de Selliers, with the curatorship of Diane de Selliers. A true reference in the publishing of fine books, bringing together art and literature, Diane de Selliers editions share the values ​​of universality and dialogue dear to UMA. It is therefore natural that this partnership was born.

UMA warmly thanks Joséphine Barbereau and the entire EDS team for their participation, as well as Mathilde Louette for writing the fascinating notices that punctuate this exhibition. Finally, UMA expresses its gratitude to Mimmo Paladino who allowed us to reproduce his works inspired by the Illiad and the Odyssey. As well as Paule Amblard and Amina Okada for the expertise they brought us.

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