Café Society: Art and Sociability in Paris, 1855–1914

"Café Society: Art and Sociability in Paris, 1855–1914" will examine the development of the French café, a crucial and accessible site for artistic discussion, and, ultimately, how cafés became the subject of works of art themselves.

Café Society will be comprised of more than 50 works of art from public and private collections in the United States and Europe. Organized into thematic sections, the exhibition seeks to demonstrate the multitude of factors that led to the rise of café culture, from the French Revolution and the growth of the bourgeoisie to Haussmannization and the Franco-Prussian War. Though ubiquitous, cafés were also infinitely varied in their nature, making them intriguingly difficult to categorize both in the fin-de-siècle and today. As places where Parisians and expatriates of various backgrounds mingled daily, cafés were often considered a microcosm for the city of Paris itself. At the dawn of the 20th century, the café remained an important part of daily life for artists and provided the inspiration for experiments with new approaches to art-making.

These works navigate these complexities while simultaneously demonstrating how the café fundamentally changed the fabric of Parisian life, allowing for daily collective social activity. These spaces proliferated rapidly, shifting how people experienced the city and each other, leading to increasingly connected populations. Alongside this social progress, the Paris café became a pervasive motif in European and American art of the 19th century.