In 2026, the Grand Palais in Paris will host a major retrospective dedicated to Nan Goldin, a leading figure in contemporary photography. Entitled This Will Not End Well, the exhibition will immerse visitors in the unique world of the American artist, blending spontaneous, life-captured images with immersive projections, creating a new dialogue between personal intimacy and the institutional framework of museums.
Contents
- An international journey before Paris
- The immersive format: when photography becomes storytelling
- The Grand Palais as a cultural setting
- Biography and artistic journey of Nan Goldin
- The artistic impact of a unique retrospective
- Conclusion: an experience not to be missed
An international journey before Paris
The This Will Not End Well retrospective is a large-scale traveling project.
- It began in 2022 at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm,
- continued at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 2023,
- then moved to the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin (November 23, 2024 – April 6, 2025),
- and the Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan (October 10, 2025 – February 15, 2026).
The final stop of this international journey will be Paris, at the Grand Palais, from April 11 to September 20, 2026. A symbolic culmination in a city that has long welcomed the artist and her slide shows, from the Centre Pompidou to La Salpêtrière.
The immersive format: when photography becomes storytelling
The exhibition highlights what makes Nan Goldin’s work so distinctive: her sound slide shows, true films composed of still images accompanied by music. These installations transform photography into visual storytelling, somewhere between documentary and personal confession.
Among the featured series, several have become iconic:
- The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, a chronicle of New York’s underground communities,
- The Other Side, a tribute to her friends, transvestites and drag queens,
- Memory Lost, an evocation of the struggle with addiction,
- Sisters, Saints and Sibyls, a reflection on grief and family memory.
The Grand Palais as a cultural setting
Hosting Nan Goldin at the Grand Palais is highly symbolic. This monumental space, a cornerstone of art and culture in France, will create a striking contrast between the solemn grandeur of the venue and the raw intimacy of her images.
Photographs born in private spaces will take on new meaning here: confronted with the majestic architecture and historical memory of a site that has presented some of the most significant exhibitions of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Biography and artistic journey of Nan Goldin
Born in 1953 in Washington, D.C., Nan Goldin grew up in a family scarred by tragedy: her sister Barbara took her own life at 18—a defining event that haunted her work and fueled her lifelong exploration of memory and identity.
She discovered photography in the late 1960s and went on to study at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. From the very beginning, she rejected traditional documentary detachment to embrace a radically intimate approach in which the camera became an extension of her own life.
Settled in New York during the 1970s and 1980s, she immersed herself in the city’s underground scene, drag queens, artists, and friends living on society’s fringes. She photographed them candidly, with raw honesty, as exemplified in her landmark series The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1985).
The AIDS crisis, which claimed many of her close friends, marked a turning point in her work: her images evolved into testimony, collective memory, and political statement. In the 2000s, she continued to explore intimacy while also taking on public causes, notably leading a campaign against the Sackler family, held responsible for fueling the U.S. opioid crisis.
Today, Nan Goldin is celebrated as a major artist who has transformed personal experience into universal narrative and elevated intimate photography to the level of museum-worthy, political art.
The artistic impact of a unique retrospective
This retrospective at the Grand Palais is more than a tribute, it is an act of institutional recognition for an artist once seen as marginal. Nan Goldin revolutionized photography by placing private life, personal struggle, and marginalized communities at the heart of her work.
Presenting her art in such a prestigious setting sends a strong message:
- It situates her work within the canon of art history, alongside the great masters exhibited at the Grand Palais.
- It underscores photography’s role as a medium of social and artistic testimony.
- And it honors an artist who, while refusing compromise, has inspired generations through the sincerity and radical honesty of her gaze.
For visitors, this retrospective promises a deeply emotional experience, merging aesthetics, memory, and political awareness.
Conclusion: an experience not to be missed
The exhibition Nan Goldin – This Will Not End Well at the Grand Palais (April 11 – September 20, 2026) stands out as one of the major art events of the year. Combining immersive slide shows, intimate narratives, and institutional recognition, it offers a chance to discover, or rediscover, the work of a photographer who transformed her own life and that of her friends into universal art.
An exhibition where intimacy becomes heritage, and photography is lived as a total experience.
Please also read: Women Photographers in the History of Photography
