Decadent Spirit: French Art at the Turn of the Century

At the turn of the twentieth century, Paris was animated by a restless convergence of tension and possibility, as daily life unfolded against competing visions of what the future might hold. In the moment known as the fin de siècle — the ​“end of the century” — artists responded to this charged condition with a spirit of imaginative liberation, developing new aesthetic languages that permeated both public space and private experience.

France stood at a threshold shaped by accelerating indus­tri­al­iza­tion, shifting social structures, and emerging technologies that promised transformation even as they unsettled established ways of seeing and living. Out of this charged atmosphere emerged some of the most compelling and influential images of the era. This exhibition traces the intertwined lives and practices of the artists, designers, and muses who gave shape to a culture defined by upheaval, beauty, and reinvention.

Focusing on French cultural production between 1880 and 1910, the exhibition brings together more than 130 works across diverse media, including works on paper, painting, sculpture, metalwork, interior and urban design, and early film. Together, these objects chart a period of extraordinary aesthetic experimentation, revealing how art became a site through which the experience of modernity was represented and reimagined.

Wege Foundation

James and Mary Nelson 

Haworth Helps
Dirk and June Hoffius 

Michael and Afafia Curtis
Patti Griswold and Kevin Haviland
Donald and Ann Kelley
Stephanie Naito
Ruth Posthumus and Marlin Feyen
Jack and Susan Smith

Additional support provided by GRAM Exhibition Society

Deborah Mankoff
David and Bette Sebastianumus