It is an ambitious project, a challenge we will be the actors and drivers of. Since 2014, the municipality has initiated the procedure to have the Promenade des Anglais recognized as a World Heritage site.
These 14 exhibitions are as many steps to achieve this. History, art, painting, writers, artists, filmmakers, poets, the list is endless, and each has shared their vision of the Promenade des Anglais or has contributed to its fame through their work, their life, and sometimes their tragedies (Isadora Duncan).
The promenade is an entire story, a saga, a series whose final episode will never be written. Jean Jacques Aillagon, following the success of the Matisse summer two years ago, takes on this challenge. Through this exhibition, designed in the same spirit as Matisse’s, he will offer the public and visitors 14 visions of this avenue stretching along the Bay of Angels through the museums of Nice.
Indeed, around the pebbles of our shores, the Galerie des Ponchettes will present the Promenade des Anglais.
With the archaeology museum, twenty centuries of walking in Nice. The MAMAC presents the Promenade as a workshop, that of the many artists who have stayed on its shores. We move west and the naive art museum showcases the promenade, simply and naively. Visitors will retrace their steps to discover Raoul Dufy in the setting of the Jules Chéret museum.
The Masséna museum is the privileged witness of the Promenade’s history; it borders it. That is where we will discover the reasons, if there were any doubts, for this UNESCO initiative.
Matisse is Nice; moreover, the two names rhyme perfectly. The Matisse museum will unveil the master’s interior Promenades. Great painters follow, and so do Chagall, his Nice, his flowers, and the Bay of Angels.
We return to the old town and at the Palais Lascaris, we will reminisce about the Ruhl celebrations, an opportunity to revisit this hotel sadly gone, demolished by developers. The photography and image theater, the Promenade from all angles, the beach when the pebbles disappear with the influx of bathers! How to portray the Promenade des Anglais?
The Villa Arson has the answer, and a cinematographic creation will help us better understand this long ribbon, a perfect arc facing the horizon. The Villa Arson is a school, and its graduates will have the privilege of the Marine gallery. We have returned to our starting point.
The most athletic, speaking of which, it is indeed about sports, will complete their visit at the national sports museum where the Promenade des Anglais, amidst automobile, nautical competitions, and bicycle races, was an arena where the greatest distinguished themselves by winning the laurels of glory.
These are the laurels, those of universal recognition of our Promenade des Anglais, that this exhibition will defend, and its success with the public will be its best advocate.
Thierry Jan
