Le Havre is a well-known tourist attraction in the Normandy region. The long beaches, the UNESCO World Heritage city centre and the André-Malraux Museum of Modern Art, France’s second-largest collection of Impressionist paintings, are the pride of the town’s inhabitants and a popular destination for visitors.

Additionally, an artistic event that turns this maritime metropolis into a summer spot for contemporary art. Directed for the second year by Gaël Charbau, an artistic director renowned for his championing of living artists in France and his commitment to public art, Un été au Havre offers a poetic and detailed stroll through the various districts. You can either use the map provided for each visitor or let yourself drift along, discovering some thirty temporary and permanent public artworks. Many of the works are the result of the various artistic interventions put in place from 2017 to 2022 by Jean Blaise, but also, for the last two years, by the pertinent choices of Gail Charbau. Among the latter, as soon as you step off the train, Isabelle Cornaro’s magnificent light installation (2023) stands out. In this hall of lost steps, the artist pays homage to the famous architect Auguste Perret, who rebuilt the town centre after the war, but above all to Marguerite Huré, who designed the superb stained-glass windows of the Saint-Joseph church. Thanks to a judicious intervention on the gigantic bay window of the station pediment, Isabelle Cornaro takes up the play of colours in the stained glass windows of the place of worship to imbue travellers with warm colours throughout the day. New for 2024, the beach is extended by a sculpture over 30 metres. long. This is a replica of the last wooden spur on the Le Havre coast. In keeping with his research into the vernacular and the art of the humble, Stéphane Vigny has reproduced the object in rocaille, a technique used by 19th-century gardeners to decorate their gardens. The monumental work, now a simple open barrier, recalls the ingenuity of those who wished to protect the beach from sea currents. A little further on, at the crossroads of Avenue Foch and Boulevard François 1er, you’ll have to look up to admire a series of chairs perched on masts. Designed by Emmanuelle Ducrocq and mounted on rotating fixtures. The seats orient themselves to the whimsical Le Havre wind. They cohabit with the recently planted trees and become the setting for a possible philosophical tale, like that of The Perched Baron. Young artist Max Coulon has built a house on his legacy. The several-metre-high wooden sculpture borrows from the snail, as the bust becomes a dwelling. Mischievously named No Reason to Move, the work comes from the prolific imagination of the artist who, as usual, uses any wood, his material of choice, to imagine and create primitive-looking creatures that seem to come from the enchanting and cruel tales of the Grimm brothers or Yorgos Lanthimos. Among the eight other artists invited this summer, we recommend visiting the colourful exhibition by Argentine artist Ad Minoliti at the Portique art centre, as well as her Hötels des oiseaux in the hanging gardens, admiring Edgar Sarin’s very tall amphora sculpture; taking Cosmo Danchin-Hamards Boats-Bus; Feel the expanse of the city with Sur le toit,a garden work created by a collective of architects and landscape gardeners from Le Havre. Or consider the dystopian alternative realities of Grégory Chatonsky, an artist and researcher in artificial intelligence.

Un Été Au Havre

June 22 to September 22

Various Locations

https://www.uneteauhavre.fr/fr/

Bus by Cosmo Bateaux

Hotel des Oizeaux by Ad Minoliti

The Affection Wave by Joel Andianomearisoa