BNF, site Miterrand (13ème) + site Richelieu
(75002).
Jusqu'au 28 mai 2006. www.bnf.fr
Two
exhibition in one, it
is
what proposes to us simultaneously the National Library by organizing a
homage to the Century of the Lights on its two Parisian
sites:
Street of Richelieu and site François Mitterand.
The
exhibition of the street of Richelieu is particularly devoted to Madam
of
Chatelet, intimate friend and mistress of Voltaire, translator of
Newton in her time. Named marquise Emilie de Breteuil,
she was engaged in the discipline of sciences, then reserved to the
men, and
initiated Voltaire with physics. Woman of character, very
appreciated, lover blazing public men, she precedes the determination
of
other great female personalities. The exhibition reveals us
some
of
its daily objects, coquetry and toilet requisites, as well as other
instruments, more scientific, compass and glasses of observation inter
alia. A course attaching for a woman of exception.
The
second exhibition, arranged on the site of Tolbiac, puts in perspective
the
movement for the Lights, if enriching in its time. Being
expressed through all the social sciences of the XVIIIème
century, it contaminates the letters, sciences, the music, arts of
space. The Encyclopaedia is the fruit more dazzling, one
century
old witness famished of knowledge. Some share, Mozart and
Rousseau, are the steady theorists. They permanently guide us
through this exposure. Books, drawings, manuscripts, paintings,
illustrate the event, between the portraits of those which gave to our
civilization the felling of progress: Voltaire, Hume,
Lavoisier, Diderot, Franklin, Montesquieu, Goethe.
