The year 2024 marks 150 years since the first “Impressionist” exhibition was held in Paris. To celebrate this anniversary, the Normandie Impressionniste Festival, held in Normandy since 2010, has this year scheduled over 120 exhibitions and performing arts programs. As part of this comprehensive lineup of events, to shine a light from both past and present perspectives on Japanese culture and its intimate connection to the development of Impressionism, the Mori Art Museum will join the Les Franciscaines Cultural Center in the Normandy town of Deauville to present Floating Worlds: From Japonisme to Contemporary Art from Japan.

Floating Worlds will feature 34 pieces of Japanese contemporary art by 17 artists from the Mori Art Museum Collection, making it the first-ever exhibition outside Japan that showcases a large group of works from the Collection. These will be joined on the French side by Impressionist and other paintings of the same era, plus Japanese ukiyoe prints, on loan from institutions including the Musée d’Orsay, Bibliothèque nationale de France, and Guimet Museum, creating a space for dialogue with Japanese contemporary artworks that will transcend temporal and spatial boundaries. Taking in rooms with perspectives such as “In the Gaze of the Other,” “Vastness of the Coastline,” “Cityscape and Urbanity,” “Portraits of 19th and 21st Centuries,” and “Mysterious Nature,” visitors will find a recurring interplay of historical continuity and moments of resonance with the innovative immersive experiences of today’s contemporary art.