On 20 October 2026, as shopfronts along the Champs-Elysees still carried marks left by rioters days earlier, the perfume house Guerlain opened a new exhibition inside its historic Paris maison. The show, titled L'Heure des Possibles, brings together works by 33 artists, four of them specially commissioned and the rest borrowed. Its starting point is one of the company's signature scents, L'Heure Bleue, and the twilight hour that gives the fragrance its name.

Wall-based pieces by established figures including James Turrell, Annette Messager, Christian Boltanski and Ugo Rondinone hang through the building alongside work by younger contemporaries such as Marie Bovo, Xie Lei and Valentin Fougeray. The maison itself dates to 1914, built on a site where the Guerlain family business, founded in 1828, has long traded. The house's art director framed the exhibition as a calm interval after days of confrontation, and an evening reception planned for the opening night was called off.

Guerlain is a host partner of Art Basel Paris, which announced it would close two days early as a safety measure, and some public sculptures installed around the capital for the fair's outdoor programme were taken down for protection. Guerlain, by contrast, said its flagship would remain open all weekend. The contrast captures the split screen of Paris art week: a major fair shutting its doors while a luxury maison a short walk away kept its exhibition on view.

The show also reflects a much longer habit. Guerlain has worked with artists for nearly two centuries, from Henri Matisse to Yves Klein and Lee Ufan, and its Bee Bottle, first made in 1853 as a wedding gift to Empress Eugenie, has since been reinterpreted by contemporary and street artists. The company holds an archive of some 25,000 works, many of them bottle designs, and has staged contemporary exhibitions in the flagship for two decades. Attention now turns to the house's 200th anniversary in 2028, when a travelling exhibition featuring 20 artists is planned for venues in Korea, Dubai, the United States, China and Japan.