Not Entertainment space, nor Museum, Ze Atelier des lumières is an original Digital Art Center, which was inaugurated in 2018. It is settled in an old foundry, established in 1835 by the Plichon Brothers.
Its initial “Gustav Klimt” exhibition was an immediate popular success, and by the end of 2019 it had received over a million visits. Then there has been a spectacular “Van Gogh” exhibition, followed by “Cezanne”, all great successes, both with kids and adults.
With over 1M visitor annually, a third of them below 25yo, the concept, which was initially looked down by most traditional museums has in fact been such a success that other similar spaces opened in cities (Amsterdam, Dortmund, Hambourg, NYC and Dubai on their way), or in partnership with these same cultural institutions.
With some comments in French, this Youtube video about Cezanne’s event will give you a small idea of the immersive experience which is performed at L’atelier des Lumières.
After the two years of pandemic stopover, it has resumed its activities. Check out the current program on their website.
Access by walk will take you there in 45mn, through the beautiful Marais district, then across a part of the “bourgeois-bohème“, a.k.a bobo(*) 11th arrondissement.
Access by subway will take you there in 20mn, after a short walk up to the Sentier metro station, direction Galieni on line 3, getting off at Parmentier metro station after 6 stops.
(*) Bobo is a portmanteau word used to describe the socio-economic bourgeois-bohemian group in France, the French analogue to the English notion of the “champagne socialist”.
The term was introduced into the English language by the cultural commentator David Brooks to describe the 1990s descendants of the yuppies in the book Bobos in Paradise (2000). Brooks describes Bobos as “highly educated folk who have one foot in the bohemian world of creativity and another foot in the bourgeois realm of ambition and worldly success”.
Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau 