Getting here

Modern and contemporary exhibitions, under Shigeru Ban’s timber roof.

It’s one of the first places I suggest to anyone coming to the gallery. I love Shigeru Ban’s building, of course, but above all the way the exhibitions take possession of its volumes. I greatly admire Chiara Parisi’s eye: she makes very free exhibitions, sometimes unexpected, where you rediscover even artists you thought you knew. That is exactly what I want from a museum. My advice: don’t try to see everything. Choose one exhibition, take your time, then come back.

Nathan Chiche

The regional collection of contemporary art, in the Hôtel Saint-Livier. Free entry.

I like this place precisely because it is discreet. You walk in almost as into a house, and that changes the way you look entirely. I go there above all to discover artists I hardly know, sometimes not at all. If you prefer being surprised to being reassured, walk in without looking too hard at the programme first.

Nathan Chiche

Two thousand years of Metz: Gallo-Roman archaeology, medieval painted ceilings, paintings.

To understand Metz you have to come through here. What I like is the feeling of walking through the city itself: antiquity, the Middle Ages, painting, architecture, all layered on one another. Some rooms seem to have always been there. You come out reading Metz differently, and that is exactly why I recommend the visit.

Nathan Chiche

Three or four exhibitions a year in a former synagogue turned art centre. Free entry.

It is one of the places I recommend most around the gallery. A former synagogue, in the middle of a village, with a contemporary programme that is often very demanding: the contrast is magnificent. I like places that ask for a small detour and then leave you feeling you have found something. Whatever you do, don’t leave without seeing the Gue(ho)st House next door.

Nathan Chiche

The house Prouvé built for his family in 1954, and the Ateliers’ office pavilion.

This house touches me in a particular way, inevitably. Working today in a school drawn by Jean Prouvé makes you want to understand how he thought when he was building for himself. Here everything looks simple, while every detail is extraordinarily intelligent. What I always look at: the joints, the openings, the way the house adapts to the ground. You almost have to look at it as a sculpture.

Nathan Chiche

Painting and sculpture from the 14th to the 20th century, and the Daum glass collection below.

I like this museum because you can move through it without feeling you are being taught a lesson. If you only see one thing, go down to the Daum collection. It shows very clearly how a city can build an artistic identity out of one material and one craft. And on the way out, the place Stanislas carries the visit on almost naturally.

Nathan Chiche

Nancy Art Nouveau in the collector Eugène Corbin’s house: furniture, glass, stained glass.

I recommend this museum even to those who think they don’t like Art Nouveau. A chair, a vase, a stained-glass window, a lamp: everything belongs to one world. What I like here is the ambition to bring art into daily life. You come out looking differently at the objects around you.

Nathan Chiche

The house Henri Sauvage built around 1901 for the cabinetmaker Louis Majorelle.

The Villa Majorelle is a total work. Architecture, furniture, ironwork and stained glass were all thought out together. What I like best are precisely the small details: a handle, the curve of a staircase, an almost invisible motif. Luxury here is never in accumulation, but in coherence.

Nathan Chiche

The Grand Duchy’s museum of modern art, in Ieoh Ming Pei’s building on the Kirchberg.

I like the Mudam because artists really have to measure themselves against Ieoh Ming Pei’s building. The light, the volumes, the sightlines sometimes give works a presence they would not have elsewhere. I often prefer to spend less time in the rooms and keep a moment to walk around the museum and Fort Thüngen. The visit goes on outside.

Nathan Chiche

Contemporary exhibitions, often of young artists, in a 19th-century bourgeois casino.

This is often where I go when I want to see something I don’t yet know. The programme takes risks, and not every exhibition sets out to charm you at once. That is exactly what I like. Some of them stay in your head long after the visit, and that is usually a good sign.

Nathan Chiche

The city’s collections, European painting and sculpture from the 17th to the 21st century, in an 1873 villa beside the park.

I like the Villa Vauban for its calm. You can stop in front of a work without being pulled straight on to the next. The relation between the house, the contemporary extension and the garden is exactly right. It is the place I recommend when you feel like looking without hurrying.

Nathan Chiche

Esch-sur-Alzette’s contemporary art space: temporary exhibitions over four floors.

At the Konschthal it is the volumes that interest me first. The space is raw, generous, and artists can really work with the architecture. I go above all for sculpture and installation. The best are the ones where you are no longer quite sure where the work ends and the building begins.

Nathan Chiche

Some hundred and fifty works made on site, along forty-five kilometres of forest trails, walked or cycled.

Here you have to forget the museum. You walk, you search, sometimes you take the wrong path, then a work appears between the trees. That way of finding things is what I like. Some pieces age, grow moss, almost vanish into the landscape. Nature ends up taking part in the work. My advice: whatever you do, don’t come in a hurry.

Nathan Chiche

A whole ironworks, a World Heritage site, which also hosts exhibitions.

It is probably the most spectacular place in this selection. The first time you arrive in front of the blast furnaces, your sense of scale changes at once. The pipes, the walkways, the rust, the masses of metal: it is all already very strong to look at. When a work manages to exist in such a setting, it becomes powerful by necessity. Even with no exhibition on, I would go.

Nathan Chiche

The Saarland’s art museum: German Impressionism and Expressionism, contemporary art.

I like coming here to look at modern art from Germany rather than from Paris. That shift alone changes how the works read, German Expressionism above all. It is the gap that interests me: crossing a border and feeling that the history of art is already no longer told in quite the same way. For me, that is what makes the visit genuinely complementary to Metz and Nancy.

Nathan Chiche