The Centre Pompidou and the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) are joining forces to present 'Louise Bourgeois. Extrême tension', an exhibition devoted to the artist's drawings and prints. It opens on 20 October 2026 at the BnF's Richelieu site and runs through 21 February 2027.

The exhibition draws on the rich graphic holdings of both institutions, brought together for the first time. By uniting the BnF's and the Pompidou's collections, it proposes a new perspective on Bourgeois's practice and on the close bond, within her work, between drawing and printmaking. Bourgeois, a towering figure of contemporary art, developed a deeply personal visual language at a distance from the century's dominant movements — one that continues to influence artists working today.

The presentation sits within the Pompidou's 'Constellation' off-site programme, the umbrella for partnerships that disperse the collection across Paris and beyond while the museum building undergoes its multi-year closure. Rather than a single temporary home for the collection, the programme sends holdings into partner institutions; the BnF collaboration is one of the programme's most prominent autumn fixtures, and it arrives at a moment when demand for access to the Pompidou's twentieth-century holdings is especially acute.

For a drawings-and-prints show, the scale of the two institutional collections gives the exhibition unusual depth. Placing the two sets of holdings in dialogue, the show makes the case that Bourgeois's graphic work — often overshadowed by her sculpture — deserves attention as a continuous, experimental strand of her output, one that sustained her thinking across six decades.