French artist Jean-Marc Bustamante will open Fonds Bustamante, a new independent cultural foundation, in Arles, southern France, on July 9, 2026. Housed in the newly renovated 12th-century Église Sainte-Croix in the heart of the city, the foundation opens with an inaugural exhibition, “En Miroirs,” running until October 30, 2026, timed to coincide with the opening week of the Rencontres d’Arles, the city’s annual summer photography festival.
Born in 1952, Bustamante has been a central figure in French and international contemporary art since the 1970s. He began as a photographer, departing early from documentary convention to produce large-scale color images devoid of human figures. From the 1990s onward, he expanded into sculpture and painting, blending abstraction, language, and transparency.
Bustamante represented France at the Venice Biennale in 2003 and the São Paulo Biennale in 1994, and participated in three editions of Documenta in Kassel, Germany. He also directed the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 2015 to 2018. The Ludwig Museum Koblenz in Germany is also due to stage a retrospective of his work in November 2026.
Never The Less, 2000
Jean-Marc Bustamante
Thaddaeus Ropac
The renovation of the former church has been carried out by architect Charles Zana, whose design draws on Arles’s history and distinctive light. The building will be divided into two sections—La Nef, housing the main exhibition rooms, and Les Collatéraux, an adjacent extension containing a research center and café. The façade features a frieze by Bustamante composed of enameled lava tiles in yellow, conceived as a tribute to Vincent van Gogh, who once stayed in the city. Spanish artist Cristina Iglesias has been commissioned to create a monumental cast-aluminum and glass sculpture for the first floor, soaring over 4 meters high.
“En Miroirs” presents Bustamante’s own work in dialogue with pieces by artists spanning several generations, including Iglesias, Rodney Graham, Franz West, Thomas Schütte, and René Daniëls, among others. The foundation will present two exhibitions per year, aligned with Arles’s Drawing Festival in April and the Rencontres d’Arles in July, placing it alongside institutions such as Luma Arles, Lee Ufan Arles and Fondation Vincent Van Gogh as a permanent fixture in the city’s cultural scene.
