To restore is to revive
A free guided visit revealing how damaged canvases of the French school were revived by the artist Alixe Fu.
Saturday 19 September → Sunday 20 September 2026
Free — limited places, book online.
Repairing becomes painting
Heritage at risk: revive, resist, reimagine
The heritage of photography
For the European Heritage Days, LabMusée in Auvers-sur-Oise opens Alixe Fu's permanent exhibition free of charge. Anonymous 18th- and 19th-century canvases, painted by students of the French school and damaged by time, are reborn under the artist's hand: restoration becomes an act of painting that does not conceal history but reveals it.
The guided visit does not stop at commentary: it ends with a conversation among the works, where the questions matter as much as the answers. That is why the groups stay small.
Visit and conversation led by the LabMusée management.
One booking, the rest freely open
Guided visit & conversation
Forty-five minutes before the revived canvases: where they came from, why they were damaged, and what Alixe Fu does to them instead of erasing the damage. The visit flows into an open conversation with the museum's management. Two departures a day, at 2:30 pm and 4:30 pm.
Before / after display
Photographs of the canvases in their original state, shown facing the finished works — a direct echo of this year's second theme, the heritage of photography.
Sign-Me participatory table
A word, a drawing, your own mixed heritage: everyone revives something in turn, echoing the museum's Sign-Me Garden. Open all weekend.
Exhibition, sculpture garden & LabCafé
Freely open throughout, no booking needed: Saturday 2 pm to 6 pm, Sunday 10 am to 6 pm.
Damage left visible
Haleurs ramenant un Bateau
A 19th-century towpath canvas, taken up again in 2019: Alixe Fu's masked figures settle into the old landscape without erasing a single line of it.
Portrait métissé
The bourgeois portrait stays intact; it is the faces rising behind it that tell what the canvas had lost.
Portrait d'Henri IV
The king is still painted the old way; it is the background that opens up, and contemporary colour that fills what the canvas had lost.
Anti-Rétro — Portraits métissés
Restoration becomes an act of painting: it does not conceal the canvas's history, it puts it on show.
The slots
Limited places
Two departures a day, at 2:30 pm and 4:30 pm. Each visit lasts 45 minutes and ends in conversation among the works — so the groups stay small.
Saturday 19 September
- 2:30 pm → 3:15 pmLimited places
- 4:30 pm → 5:15 pmLimited places
Sunday 20 September
- 2:30 pm → 3:15 pmLimited places
- 4:30 pm → 5:15 pmLimited places
- Where
- 23 rue du Pois, 95430 Auvers-sur-Oise
- Price
- Free
Booking your slot creates your Discovery Pass: a free temporary membership of the association, valid for the day. It grants access and lets us prepare for your visit.
Also issued at the desk on the day, subject to remaining places.