The Grand Palais in Paris frequently hosts large-scale exhibitions - this year featuring Pop Art master Warhol's 'Large Portraits Exhibition'
"Images within Images," exhibited alongside Warhol, was also a distinctive and innovative exhibition
Despite budget constraints, this year's music festival still attracted many young audiences - the Jazz Concert on the banks of the Seine near the Bibliothèque nationale de France, 13th arrondissement

Text and photos by Chen Chi-Hsiang. This year, under the global financial storm, art exhibitions and activities everywhere have been significantly affected. Due to tight funding for cultural events, cultural budgets seem least important among all national budgets; when economic or financial crises hit, arts budgets are always the first to be cut. The public seems indifferent to losing an exhibition or concert, as there are more basic livelihood issues and material urgencies in life.

Paris art exhibitions are no exception. Every May, during the pleasant weather, the Grand Palais in Paris holds its annual Monumental Exhibition (German artist Anselm Kiefer in 2007 and American artist Richard Serra in 2008). Over the past two years, this grand exhibition has become part of the institutional framework for contemporary French and European art, becoming one of Paris’s most international-scale exhibitions, which the French take pride in. This year, French artist Christian Boltanski was scheduled to exhibit, but he disappeared without a trace, as if nothing had happened; only those concerned with arts and culture would know.

This year, the annual outdoor sculpture exhibition at Luxembourg Park in Paris also vanished. This is one of the grand cultural events held by the French National Assembly during the summer vacation. Of course, regarding other summer outdoor music concerts, theater performances, and other cultural activities, I know nothing about them either; they were all canceled or naturally disappeared due to budget constraints.