General curator: Agathe Sanjuan
Scientific curators: Nicolas Barbey and Élisabeth Collin-Canto
DATES! From October 19th, 2026 to February 3rd, 2027
Writer Michel Butor (1926–2016) made dialogue between the arts a driving force of his creative practice. Best known as a leading figure of the Nouveau Roman, his work soon expanded into essays and poetry. He practised photography for a decade (1951–1961) before turning to the lenses of other photographers, working with them to create artists’ books. Collaborating with photographers—as well as painters and printmakers—he produced nearly 1,800 books in limited editions, both printed and handwritten, interweaving poetry and image through a continually renewed invention of forms.
The poet’s imagination drew both on his own sensory world and on his encyclopaedic, humanist knowledge, spanning the arts and sciences. To mark the centenary of Michel Butor’s birth and the bicentenary of photography, the exhibition Michel Butor, Ultrasensitive Portrait reveals a lesser-known side of the poet and his passion for science. Butor invites us to look at scientific books differently, uncovering their inherent visual and textual poetry. The exhibition seeks to bring these correspondences into play once again, placing artists’ books by Butor and his collaborating photographers in dialogue with landmark scientific books and objects from Université Paris Cité. Old, rare and now precious, these works bear witness to particular stages in the history of research, the emergence of scientific disciplines and the evolution of knowledge over time. Through these encounters, poetry and science come together to offer us a sensitive perception of the living world.
Musée d'Histoire de la médecine
Located in the former Faculty of Medicine of Paris, the Musée d’Histoire de la Médecine houses some of the oldest medical collections in Europe. First assembled by Dean Lafaye in the eighteenth century, they were subsequently expanded with a significant collection of objects representing the various branches of surgical practice up to the end of the nineteenth century. The Musée d’Histoire de la Médecine has established itself among Paris’s many museums and also enjoys an international reputation.
Exhibition catalogue: Michel Butor, Ultrasensitive Portrait, edited by Nicolas Barbey and Agathe Sanjuan, Longue vue collection, Paris, Université Paris Cité Éditions, 2026.