Paris and Wakefield put the circus back centre ring
Acrobats, clowns and tightrope walkers are taking over two museums this winter.
The Musée de Montmartre in Paris opens The Circus: a Factory of Modern Art on 16 October, running to 14 February 2027. The Hepworth Wakefield in Wakefield, England, follows with Marc Chagall: The Circus from 21 November to 25 April 2027, according to listings detailed by The Art Newspaper.
The Paris show is built around the neighbourhood’s own circus history. Its French title is “Le Cirque, fabrique de l’art moderne”. The museum says it will bring together paintings, sculptures, drawings, posters and costumes, as listed by the Musée de Montmartre.
A highlight will be Fernand Léger’s Le Cirque Medrano (1918), on loan from the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Léger later published Cirque, a book of lithographs, prints made from a prepared stone or metal plate, in 1950. Visitors will also see circus props including trumpets, musical saws and original clown costumes.
The story starts a short walk from the museum. The Circus Medrano, first called the Circus Fernando, stood in Montmartre. It earned the nickname Painters’ Circus because so many regulars kept studios nearby. The list of artists linked to it runs from Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Georges Seurat and Pierre Bonnard to Pablo Picasso, Georges Rouault, Léger and Marc Chagall.
Chagall gets his own stage in Yorkshire. The Hepworth Wakefield describes its exhibition as a celebration of his circus-themed lithographs and paintings. The roots go back to Paris in 1926 and 1927, when Chagall painted at the Cirque d’Hiver in Paris. Art dealer Ambroise Vollard lent him his private box overlooking the ring.
The gouaches, paintings in opaque watercolour, that Chagall made in that box became the starting point for a later set of lithographs. Those prints form the heart of the Wakefield show. The exhibition also includes an essay by Chagall translated into English for the first time.
For visitors, the practical details are simple. The Hepworth Wakefield lists admission at £14, £12 concessions, with free entry for members, Wakefield District residents and under-18s, on its exhibition page. The Chagall show opens alongside Ida Ekblad: WORLD’S LARGEST METAPHOR as part of the gallery’s winter season, with a members’ preview on the evening of 20 November.
What makes this stand out is how close the artists were to the act. They were not painting from memory. They had season seats, sketchbooks on knees, and sawdust on shoes. Expect big crowds, bright colours and a very full ring.
