Enlightening the Living. Observing Art and Nature with Vincent Munier

With the Strasbourg Zoological Museum now due to reopen, the Fine Arts Museum is inviting wildlife photographer Vincent Munier to urge visitors to escape the humdrum, to take time off, to look at art as we look at nature.

In the exhibition, Vincent Munier's photographs can be seen side by side with works from collections in Strasbourg's Fine Arts, Prints and Drawings, Modern and Contemporary Art, Tomi Ungerer and Zoological Museums spanning the 16th to the 20th centuries.

The exhibits and photographs showing animals in their natural environment thus interact and resonate with each other, giving visitors a contemplative moment in which time seems to stand still.

With his technique and his vision, Vincent Munier sensitively captures the fleeting nature and power of the encounter with a wild animal. Along with the photograph representing it, the animal photographed in all its splendour acquires the status of a work of art.

In an attempt to recharge our batteries, we increasingly express the need to reconnect with the living. The same is true of works of art, a museum being in its own way a kind of refuge. Here we propose to invite Nature into the Museum. Just like the living, art deserves to be observed, contemplated and protected – today perhaps even more than ever before. In order to "know how to protect" we need to "know how to look." Doesn't a visit to a museum ultimately have affinities with a walk in the forest? Isn't the museum in its own way a kind of reserve, a refuge?

The exhibition displays 81 of Vincent Munier's photographs focusing on the theme of the forest (including 15 “cyanotypes” produced in partnership with the photographer Julien Félix and Léo-Pol Jacquot). It also presents a collection of photographs of animals seen at a distance against a white background, a shade favoured by the photographer.

The scenography, designed by by Atelier-Aile, provides a sensory accompaniment to the exhibition visit.

Curators: Céline Marcle and Dominique Jacquot, curators, Fine Arts Museum