Less than a week after Frieze, things heat up again. No one has time to catch their breath, but the art world moves on. Maybe even more intensely. Many assume the art world is inaccessible, and if there are those who think otherwise, it’s only in exchange for high investment. But the opposite might be true. Art Basel Paris 2026 Public Program is exactly for those who want to “get a taste” of art, without any investment at all. And in Paris, that’s exactly possible.
people don’t quite see it that way. It’s the fashion week of the art world. A music festival for those who live and breathe art. The moment when the entire scene goes at a thousand percent all at once, galleries, curators, brands, all in one city, in one week. And that’s exactly why it pays off to be prepared.
This year, Art Basel Paris once again spills beyond the Grand Palais, into nine historic locations across the city, freely accessible, with nothing between you and the sculpture. This is your cheat sheet for what you’ll see in the streets of Paris, icons like Robert Indiana, and names you might not know yet.
1. Palais d’Iéna: Alice Diop, presented by Miu Miu
The filmmaker takes her first step off the screen. Alice Diop, whose debut Saint Omer won the Silver Lion in Venice, spent years before that making documentaries about life on the margins, La Permanence, Nous, people the camera usually overlooks.
Now she’s doing the same thing with exhibition space. Geste de Consolation. Photography, film, sculpture, poetry, dance, one room after another, like cuts in a film. Zanele Muholi, Mary Lee Bendolph, Simone Leigh. Her bronze Sentinel (Mami Wata) closes the door at the end of the journey.
Crossover: Miu Miu isn’t just a logo at the entrance here. For the third year running, it’s behind the entire Public Program, and Diop is its filmmaker, the same one who made Fragments for Venus for the brand. We wrote more about it [here].
3. Cité de l’architecture: Tracey Emin, presented by White Cube
Three bronze bodies. Lying, kneeling, seated, a journey from vulnerability to resilience across three sculptures. Emin, who built her place among the most influential British artists of her generation through confessional, bodily work (think of her My Bed), has belonged to White Cube’s roster since the very beginning.
Crossover: White Cube (London, Hong Kong, New York, Paris, Seoul) is no random gallery. It’s the network behind her retrospectives worldwide, the same one that has accompanied her journey for decades, from scandalized “bad girl” of British art to a sculptor working at monumental scale.
Photo: Charlie Gates for The New York Times
4. Galerie des moulages: Kennedy Yanko, curator Matthieu Poirier
Metal and acrylic “skin,” installed right among the casts of French sculptural classics. Yanko works with what others have thrown away, and that’s exactly why her pieces feel especially sharp here. Recycling next to century-old monumentality.
Yanko is no newcomer to the big scene. In 2022, she exhibited in the Art Basel Unlimited section, where galleries present works too large or too ambitious for a standard booth.
Foto: Zeph Colombatto pre Vogue
Her nearly six-meter-tall sculpture By Means Other Than the Known Senses stood there alongside works by artists whose names you usually see on museum walls, not in the market’s main aisles. That’s exactly what Unlimited is, a selection of works the section itself treats as proof that something bigger can be sold, not just exhibited.
Crossover: Poirier, as curator, chose this location deliberately. The contrast between waste material and classical sculptural masterpieces is no accident, it’s the entire concept of the show.
5. Petit Palais: Cosima von Bonin, presented by Petzel, Gaga, Neu
A plush octopus in a silk scarf. Von Bonin makes comedy out of material like tartan and plush, but she does it with three galleries at once, New York, Mexico, Berlin. That’s exactly how international her market is.
Her world is full of exhaustion disguised as playfulness. Works like Gaslighting and Love Bombing (2023) look cute at first glance, Bambi the fawn, soft outlines, but the titles refer to psychological manipulation in relationships. Von Bonin also borrows from fashion, in one textile piece she quotes Martin Margiela’s signature cross-stitch.
Crossover: Von Bonin also pays tribute to Martin Kippenberger, her friend. The work The MK 2 Formula #303 quotes his streetlamp works from 1989–1991, the same Kippenberger we mentioned in connection with Elfie Semotan and his wedding album.
Petzel is among the leading New York names, which gives von Bonin weight beyond Cologne, where she lives and works.
© Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt 2024, Photo: Norbert Miguletz
6. Jardin de la Nouvelle-France: Boz Deseo Garden, presented by Petrine
A lightning rod from the Bristol Channel. Once a route of the transatlantic slave trade, now a sculpture in a park named after a French colony. Nothing accidental about it.
Crossover: Petrine (Paris, Düsseldorf) is a smaller but increasingly watched gallery, exactly the kind of space that notices politically charged work before it reaches the major institutions.
Source: petrine.fr
7. Square Jean Perrin: Lionel Sabatté, presented by Ceysson & Bénétière
Bronze birds, descendants of dinosaurs, paused mid-migration. Sabatté is a finalist for the 2025 Marcel Duchamp Prize.
Crossover: Ceysson & Bénétière (Paris, New York, Lyon, Geneva, Saint-Étienne, Luxembourg) has the widest European network of branches among the galleries on this list. So Sabatté’s birds literally fly across continents.
Source: Art Basel, Threads (@artbasel)
8. Place Clemenceau: Robert Indiana, presented by Almine Rech
A monumental steel version of LOVE. Indiana called himself an “American painter of signs,” and that’s exactly where, on the border between America and Europe, his gallery stands today too.
Crossover: Almine Rech (Paris, Brussels, New York, Shanghai, Monaco) has long built bridges between the American and European markets.
Photo: Jack Mitchell/Getty Images
9. Prehliadka sôch na Avenue Winston-Churchill
Na aleji budú vystavené objekty niekoľkých mien. Alicja Kwade, nemecko-poľská umelkyňa zastúpená galériou Mennour, prináša guľový objem z kameňa. Carmen Herrera, kubánsko-americká umelkyňa (galéria Lisson), pridáva svoj podpisový žltý geometrický tvar. Keita Miyazaki, japonský umelec zastúpený galériou Rosenfeld, skladá sochu z recyklovaných autodielov a japonského papiera.
Curator: Jérôme Sans, Paris+ par Art Basel “Sites”
© Alicja Kwade, photo: Archives kamel mennour
Manfred Pernice, a German artist (Anton Kern and Neu), installs concrete benches. Niki de Saint Phalle, a French-American artist (Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois), adds a mosaic totem. And finally Yinka Shonibare, a British-Nigerian artist, creates a bronze sculpture with Dutch wax, represented by the same gallery as Kwade, Mennour.
Courtesy Greene Naftali
Crossover: Also exhibiting on the same avenue is Simone Fattal, a French-Syrian artist, with her bronze sculpture Door (2024). What’s unusual is that she’s represented by five galleries at once (Karma International, Balice Hertling, Greene Naftali, kaufmann repetto, Hubert Winter), making her one of the most sought-after names of the entire festival.
When and where
Most projects run from October 20 to 25, 2026, Palais d’Iéna from the 21st to the 25th. Free admission, registration for Geste de Consolation opens October 8 on miumiu.com.
