San Antonio is getting a one-way ticket to early 20th-century Paris! The McNay Art Museum announces “Modern Paris: A Century Begins,” a luminous new exhibition on view October 30, 2026 through January 24, 2027, bringing together more than 50 paintings, prints and sculptures — every single one drawn from the museum’s own celebrated permanent collection.
The show reads like a roll call of the artists who changed art forever: Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Berthe Morisot, Pablo Picasso, Chaim Soutine and Vincent van Gogh, alongside fellow masters like Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Together the works trace a thrilling arc — from Alfred Sisley’s “The Route from Saint-Germain to Marly” (1872), which hung in the very first Impressionist exhibition of 1874, to the daring rise of Fauvism and Cubism that followed.
The exhibition also shines a well-deserved spotlight on Marion Koogler McNay, the museum’s founding collector, whose visionary taste brought these French modernist treasures to South Texas in the 1930s and 1940s — long before many of these artists became the icons we know today. For visitors, it is a rare chance to see so many of these beloved works gathered together, many of them usually tucked into the museum’s thematic galleries or off view. The show opens October 30 — plan your visit at mcnayart.org and let Paris come to you, San Antonio style!
Photo: McNay Art Museum
