For the first time, eight Parisian museums have come together to celebrate an artist during her lifetime. Barbara Chase-Riboud’s (b. 1939, Philadelphia) career spans seven decades, during which she travels the world and develops an unparalleled mastery of forms. This exhibition will present to the public for the first time a set of monumental sculptures, which demonstrate the power of bronze and silk, at the heart of the sculptor’s work, weaving links between cultures, histories, and materials.

Entitled Quand un nœud est dénoué, un dieu est libéré [Everytime a Knot is Undone, A God is Released], this exhibition is named after Barbara Chase-Riboud’s collection of poetry, published in 2014. This project, unlike any other, in its diversity and precision, will offer the public a constellation of encounters with her work: sculptures, drawings, and poems, created from 1958 to the present day. Each institution will weave a story, a relationship to Barbara Chase-Riboud’s art, through a presentation designed each time in a specific way, in conversation with the different museographic routes and the architecture of each place.

At Centre Pompidou, the hang is conceived in dialogue with the other rooms of the museum, bringing together a selection of key works offering an overview of the diversity of Chase-Riboud’s creation.

Supported by the Ford Foundation and the Terra Foundation for American Art, conceived by Erin Jenoa Gilbert and Donatien Grau, advisor for contemporary programs at the Musée du Louvre, in dialogue with each institution, Barbara Chase-Riboud. Quand un nœud est dénoué, un dieu est libéré is the first multi-museum monographic exhibition to be presented in Paris during an artist’s lifetime.

The eight participating museums are: Musée du Louvre, Musée d’Orsay, Palais de la Porte Dorée, Cité de la musique – Philharmonie de paris, Centre Pompidou, Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Musée National des arts asiatiques – Guimet, and Palais de Tokyo.