As winter approaches, strange creatures are coming to Paris to spend the season. Imagined by contemporary artists, they fill the mysterious forest that has sprung up in the Conciergerie. By venturing into this wild space and the accompanying book, the public will make strange encounters. On themed pathways, they will discover surprising works: objects of fantasy, mirrors reflecting our failings and weaknesses or alarming witnesses to major environmental issues.

In the general introduction, Claude d’Anthenaise broaches the place and various roles of the animal figure in the imagination and practice of today’s artists. The second part will enable the reader to travel to the thirty-five monuments where, during the summer of 2011, the sixty or so artists produced original works. The Parliament of Fowls, The Big Herd, and Utopias for a Dog are some of the themes tackled.

A conservateur en chef du patrimoine, and Inspecteur des Monuments historiques, Claude d’Anthenaise is director of the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris, whose extension and new museography he is overseeing. He is the curator of the Monuments et animaux event organised in 2011 in thirty-five monuments and of the exhibition Bêtes off at the Conciergerie.