Paris Noir: Centre Pompidou's Final Exhibition Before Closure

The Centre Pompidou in Paris will close on June 30, 2025, for a €260 million renovation, with its final exhibition 'Paris Noir' running until that date. The show features 350 works by 150 artists of African descent active between 1950 and 2000, curated by Alicia Knock. It highlights artists who made Paris a global cultural hub while fleeing colonialism and segregation, including Beauford Delaney, Georges Coran, Faith Ringgold, and Afi Nayo. The exhibition is structured as an atlas, positioning Paris as a node in a network connecting Africa, the Americas, and the Caribbean. It includes works by Ted Joans, Gerard Sekoto, Wilson Tiberio, and Diagne Chanel. The show also references the Présence Africaine bookstore, the 1956 Sorbonne pan-African congress, and La Revue Noire. Knock has brought to light previously unexhibited works, many of which will be acquired and potentially permanently displayed when the museum reopens in 2030. The exhibition is described as a 'never-before-seen' rewriting of art history, challenging the Paris-New York postwar narrative and asserting that European modernity is incomplete without its Black artists.