Mythologies

First temporary exhibition since the reopening of the Musée Bonnat-Helleu in Bayonne. "Mythologies" is conceived in partnership with the Louvre Museum and with the exceptional participation of the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac. The exhibition brings into dialogue the great foundational narratives that run through human history, from pharaonic Egypt to modern Japan, and from ancient Greece to the Basque mountains. It brings together nearly a hundred works from every era and every continent.

How was the world created? What powers inhabit it? How do heroines and heroes manage to shape their destiny? These are the essential questions our myths seek to answer. Born to explain the world, to ward off the unknown or to reflect on the human condition, these stories circulate, transform and echo one another, to the point that cultures distant in space and time imagine figures and tales that are strikingly alike. "Mythologies" offers an unprecedented dialogue between these figures and stories, where the Pyrenean worlds meet for the first time with the great traditions of the Mediterranean, the Near and Middle East, as well as those of Mexico, Oceania and Africa.

"Mythologies" also extends the dialogue on our great myths into their contemporary representations. As Roland Barthes, a native of Bayonne, showed: myths do not belong to the past. Through the heroines and heroes they stage, the monsters and demons they make us fear, or the origins they attribute to certain mysterious phenomena, these great narratives continue to structure our imagination and shape how we see, from literature and cinema to today's video games.

This exhibition is produced by the Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bayonne, in partnership with the Louvre Museum and with the exceptional collaboration of the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac.