I accompany a school trip to MO.CO.

At the invitation of a teacher from the Lycée Ernest Hemingway in Nîmes (France), which, when I was a high school student in Nîmes, was called the Lycée Camargue, I had the pleasure of participating as an artist-supervisor in an outing to the MO.CO. , the Contemporary Art Museum of the Montpellier metropolitan area, of two classes, one in Art History and the other in Applied Arts.

The theme of the exhibition "Museums in Exile" is art in times of war, a subject that is unfortunately a hot topic today. What artistic productions in times of war? How to protect the artworks?

Three key examples are represented: Chile, Yugoslavia and Palestine, with also some spotlights on the Prado during Franco's coup d'état in 1936 in Spain, the Louvre during the German invasion of France in 1939, and of course Ukraine which reluctantly invited itself to this exhibition.

Of course, in such an exhibition, the case of Spain particularly appeals to me, having lived there for 18 years. And especially Guernica, the famous painting by Picasso on the bombing of this village in the North of Spain where I went many years ago and where no stigma allows one to tell of the horror that took place there. I remember all these stories that I was told about the oppression experienced by the Republicans who hid, some for years, and finally fled, for many of them, to Morocco.

Chile entered my life when one of my uncles married a Chilean woman and enriched the family with a new culture. I met many Chilean expatriates, some refugees, who lived in the area around Montpellier where I was studying at the time. How many stories of escape were told to me via the French embassy in Santiago de Chile. The difficulty of integrating into France and this feeling of injustice in having to do twice as much to be accepted. These speeches resonated with me, and still do.

This exhibition, which is on display until February 5, 2023, has awakened many memories and life stories. If you have the opportunity, I recommend you go and visit it.