Fragmentation Museum

Barbara Kruger — The History of Tears (2026), Paris

At the Bourse de Commerce, Barbara Kruger turns words into a space that visitors move through as much as they read.

Barbara Kruger’s The History of Tears covers the Rotunda floor and walls with black, white and red phrases; two visitors reveal its architectural scale.

Barbara Kruger, The History of Tears, Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris, 2026. Photo : Florent Michel. Source : Pinault Collection. Courtesy of the artist, Sprüth Magers and David Zwirner. © Tadao Ando Architect & Associates, Niney et Marca Architectes, agence Pierre-Antoine Gatier.

At the Bourse de Commerce, words take on an architectural scale. They surround visitors, extend through the display cases and encounter the voices and faces of the videos. Kruger turns reading into a physical experience: relations of power become legible in the ways a sentence positions, addresses and holds us.

Location
Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris, France. Conceived for the Rotunda and the twenty-four display cases in the Passage, The History of Tears is presented from October 7, 2026 to January 25, 2027. Curated by Matthieu Humery, with the collaboration of Lola Regard.

Artist
Barbara Kruger, born in 1945, is an American artist living and working in Los Angeles and New York. Since the late 1970s, she has combined images, text and communication technologies to question power, gender and the construction of representation.

Sources : Hypeart, 6 October 2026 ; Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection ; David Zwirner.