Program

Rendez-vous aux Jardins is a national event inviting curious visitors to discover the richness and variety of France's parks and gardens.

For this 23rd edition, exploring the theme of "sight", the Maison Jean Cocteau is holding a photo competition: "Le plus beau cadre" — the most beautiful frame. Pick up a frame provided by our team, find your perfect angle in the garden, and you may just win concert tickets.

To open this new cycle of concerts, Rachel Koblyakov's violin and Orlando Bass's piano bring into the Maison the works of Reynaldo Hahn, César Franck and Guillaume Lekeu — a programme that weaves, between literature and music, the threads of a shared Belle Époque.

The season's second gathering: Alice Caubit on clarinet, Agnès Vesterman on cello and Violaine Debever at the piano summon Debussy and Saint-Saëns, with the mischievous spirit of Francis Blanche woven through as counterpoint — a sonic carnival where the marvellous is never far away.

For this third concert, Perrine Chapoutot's flute and Ayaka Matsuda's piano lend their voices to those of Germaine Tailleferre, Mel Bonis and Lili Boulanger.

For this fourth concert, Rémi Fox on saxophone, Jean-Paul Céléa on double bass and Hervé Sellin at the piano take hold of Satie and Piaf — and remake them as improvisations.

Fifth concert: the Discours choir, conducted by Denis Comtet, brings the voices of the Groupe des Six into the garden of the Maison.

Sixth concert of the season: Arthur Decaris on violin, Anna Sypniewski on viola and Florian Pons on cello reconvene, for one afternoon, Cocteau's drawing room — with Milhaud, Honegger, Tailleferre and Poulenc as guests.

For the penultimate gathering, the string players of the Orchestre national d'Île-de-France bring Bach into the Maison — as proof that rigour and emotion are not opposites. They seek each other out.

To close the season, soprano Marion Tassou and Jamal Moqadem at the piano summon Wagner, Nietzsche and Liszt — three passions in conversation.

Rendez-vous aux Jardins is a national event inviting curious visitors to discover the richness and variety of France's parks and gardens.

For this 23rd edition, exploring the theme of "sight", the Maison Jean Cocteau is holding a photo competition: "Le plus beau cadre" — the most beautiful frame. Pick up a frame provided by our team, find your perfect angle in the garden, and you may just win concert tickets.

In 2026, from 13 June to 19 September, the Maison presents a new cycle of eight concerts — original programmes of the highest order, created for this place, performed by exacting musicians, and open to all.

Each concert, lasting around an hour, takes place on Saturdays at 6pm. An invitation to discover new repertoires, and a reminder — if one were needed — of Cocteau's eclecticism and his passion for the many forms of art in his time, from jazz to Reynaldo Hahn. Works that have slipped from memory will be restored to the light by Marc-Olivier Dupin, who has once again shaped this season's programme. The musicians who perform them will take care to share what drew them to each piece, the role Cocteau played, the words he left us. This year, thirty musicians will find their place in these salons de musique.

I hope that in 2026, many of you will come and share in these moments of quiet happiness.

Benoît Solès President, GIP Maison Jean Cocteau

To open this new cycle of concerts, Rachel Koblyakov's violin and Orlando Bass's piano bring into the Maison the works of Reynaldo Hahn, César Franck and Guillaume Lekeu — a programme that weaves, between literature and music, the threads of a shared Belle Époque.

The season's second gathering: Alice Caubit on clarinet, Agnès Vesterman on cello and Violaine Debever at the piano summon Debussy and Saint-Saëns, with the mischievous spirit of Francis Blanche woven through as counterpoint — a sonic carnival where the marvellous is never far away.

Young musicians from the Conservatoire Intercommunal de Musique des 2 Vallées bring their music into the garden — a first performance under open skies, among the roses and the silence Cocteau loved.

From 27 June to 30 August 2026, the Région Île-de-France invites you to discover the gardens around you in a new light — this is the 10th edition of Jardins ouverts.

For this new edition, the Maison Jean Cocteau's garden will welcome an artistic installation, created in partnership with the Région Île-de-France. The work is called ENTOMA — three panels of white ceramic, born from the encounter between Rouen-based draughtsman Simon Leumaire (SIM) and Breton ceramicists Jean-Marc Fondimare and Gérard Réquillard. Each panel portrays an insect native to France, screen-printed onto raw porcelain from a spare, refined drawing. The work invites us to reconsider our relationship with fragile nature and the invisible living world, while exploring the purity of form and the dialogue between the mineral and the vegetal.

For this third concert, Perrine Chapoutot's flute and Ayaka Matsuda's piano lend their voices to those of Germaine Tailleferre, Mel Bonis and Lili Boulanger.

For this fourth concert, Rémi Fox on saxophone, Jean-Paul Céléa on double bass and Hervé Sellin at the piano take hold of Satie and Piaf — and remake them as improvisations.

Fifth concert: the Discours choir, conducted by Denis Comtet, brings the voices of the Groupe des Six into the garden of the Maison.

Sixth concert of the season: Arthur Decaris on violin, Anna Sypniewski on viola and Florian Pons on cello reconvene, for one afternoon, Cocteau's drawing room — with Milhaud, Honegger, Tailleferre and Poulenc as guests.

For the penultimate gathering, the string players of the Orchestre national d'Île-de-France bring Bach into the Maison — as proof that rigour and emotion are not opposites. They seek each other out.

To close the season, soprano Marion Tassou and Jamal Moqadem at the piano summon Wagner, Nietzsche and Liszt — three passions in conversation.

On Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 September, the company Le cirque dans les étoiles brings its puppet theatre to the garden — two performances each day, at 2 pm and 4 pm.

On Saturday 19 September at 3 pm, gallerist Dominique Bert and academic David Gullentops meet around Jean Cocteau's drawings for a conversation in two voices.

To mark the memory of Jean Cocteau — gone sixty-three years this 11 October 2026 — and in conversation with the exhibition Colette, une grande sœur, now unfolding on the upper floor of the house, we will welcome two scholars into the intimacy of the Maison for a dialogue tracing the paths where Cocteau and Colette crossed.

In 1958, Jean Cocteau agreed, at the request of the elected representatives of Milly-la-Forêt, to decorate the small chapel of Saint Blaise, located on the outskirts of the village. For this former leper chapel, Cocteau drew inspiration from the medicinal plants, known as Simples, grown in Milly: marshmallow, belladonna, valerian, buttercup, colchicum, henbane, gentian and mint. These large colourful stems, stretching from the floor to the roof along the walls, surround a scene depicting the Resurrection of Christ.

Paying homage to Milly's specialities, the artist repeated a monumental work, following on from those brilliantly executed in the south of France. The scene of the Resurrection of Christ is particularly striking, with its idea of souls ascending to heaven, while Cocteau suggests, through the epitaph engraved on the poet's tombstone, ‘I remain with you’, that this is not the case for his work. Stained glass windows with anthropomorphic geometric motifs, designed by Cocteau and created by a German master glassmaker, complete the ensemble.

The chapel will open its doors to the public in June, after a complete restoration of the paintings.

Curators: GIP Maison Jean Cocteau, Muriel Genthon and Céline Delamotte

Scenography: Frédéric Beauclair

On 18 April, the Maison Jean Cocteau in Milly-la-Forêt opens its doors to a new exhibition: Colette, an Elder Sister.

From the early 1900s until Colette's death in 1954, Jean Cocteau and Colette shared a friendship of singular artistic and intellectual complicity. Between the earth-bound woman and the tightrope walker, how could such an unlikely bond have ever taken root?

Colette, an Elder Sister is an invitation to discover its many layers. It begins with their first encounter at the Palais de Glace on the Champs-Élysées in 1903, when a teenage Cocteau came across Colette dressed in cycling clothes — a devotee of Belle Époque pleasures and Parisian haunts. Before he became her friend and accomplice, Cocteau was captivated by a young woman who shed social conventions and claimed her freedom, even at the risk of scandal. Then, in the 1930s, their closeness deepened. As Colette's literary reputation came into its own, their neighbouring apartments at the Palais-Royal in Paris drew them together — through frequent visits, walks in that garden "for grown-ups," and affectionate letters. Watching his elder's decline, Cocteau became, in Colette's final years, a tender and attentive presence, while she recognised in him the poet who dares everything.

A catalogue accompanies the exhibition, with contributions from two scholars, Nicole Ferrier-Caverivière and David Gullentops, offering deeper insight into what drew these two towering figures together — and what kept them fascinated by each other.

The exhibition brings together drawings, photographs, letters and quotations that trace this friendship across the years. At its heart: Cocteau's Portrait of Colette in Charcoal and Flour, on exceptional loan from the Musée national d'art moderne (Centre Pompidou), and an excerpt from Yannick Bellon's documentary in which the two companions talk, freely and warmly, about everything and nothing.

Exhibition on view from 18 April to 1 November. Open Thursday to Sunday, 11am to 6pm. The exhibition is included in the visit to the Maison, led by a guide.

Booking recommended.

rom May 3, 2025, two sculptures by Michel Charpentier (1927-2023), from the collection of FRAC (Regional Fund for Contemporary Art) of Ile-de-France, will be presented in the garden of the Maison Jean Cocteau in Milly-la-Forêt.

In response to the exhibition proposed by FRAC, Berserk and Pyrrhia, on the connections between contemporary art and mediaeval art, which will be presented in both FRAC venues and in twelve off-site locations, the Maison Jean Cocteau is installing the two Virgins of Ile-de-France, works by Michel Charpentier, in the garden facing the entrance.

At first glance, these two Virgin and Child sculptures may surprise viewers with their grotesque and somewhat decrepit appearance. For Michel Charpentier, a devotee of these life-sized outdoor sculptures in gray cement, they reflect suffering humanity, as do his Cantatrices with their wide-open mouths. Referencing the statues of the cathedrals of Ile-de-France, these Virgin and Child sculptures - south and north, as if they had been placed before each of the church portals - are part of the Region's history, a history that the sculptor tints with humor and derision. They will be set against the backdrop of the walls of the old castle adjoining the garden, thus creating a link between the cathedral statues and the medieval origins of the castle. But this Middle Ages is indeed reinvented. Charpentier and Cocteau knew each other: it was in Rome, when Michel Charpentier was a resident at the Villa Medici, that Jean Cocteau noticed his strange sculptures. "It's wonderful! We must help this young man!" said the poet, moved by this vision of suffering humanity, imbued with the sacred. A vision that undoubtedly brings them together.

Biography of Michel CHARPENTIER (September 6, 1927 in Auvers-sur-Oise - July 2, 2023 in Cavaillon)

First Grand Prix de Rome in medal making

Resident at the French Academy, Villa Medici from 1951 to 1955. It was in Rome that he met Jean Cocteau.

Malraux Prize at the Paris Biennale 1963.

Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris in 1965

From 1967, member of the steering committee of the Salon de Mai

Professor, head of sculpture workshop at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, from 1973 to 1991

Retrospective exhibition in 1991 at the École des Beaux-Arts

Development of his Wood of Sculptures, a landscape space and initiatory garden, in Vallangoujard, in Val d'Oise, from 1994 to 2002

Grand Prix Simone and Cino Del Duca, in 2007

Opening to the public in 2019 of the Michel CHARPENTIER Sculpture Garden, a permanent installation of 25 works, in Valmondois, Val d'Oise

Opening to the public in 2022 of the Michel CHARPENTIER Space, a permanent installation of about twenty works, outdoors, at the chevet of the Saint-Yved abbey church, in Braine, Aisne.

Being born in Auvers-sur-Oise must likely constitute what one calls favorable auspices. But many people were born in Auvers-sur-Oise without becoming painters or sculptors. Having a grandfather who met Van Gogh can be considered a higher sign of destiny. But, again, not all those whose grandfather knew Van Gogh necessarily became painters or sculptors. One must therefore consider that Michel Charpentier, who meets both previous criteria, had other good reasons that drove him to become a sculptor.

The man speaks of his work with great simplicity, with a kind of permanent astonishment in the face of this mystery. "What is sculpture, really? It's solidified dreams!" he confides with a smile. For him, sculpture is what cannot be said or written, it's ultimately quite secret. Michel Charpentier, like an actor, believes he must "get into the character's skin." This skin takes on decisive importance in his sculptures. Wrinkled, swollen, twisted skins and deformed forms participate in a grotesque vision that is nonetheless not devoid of humanity.

His technique of cement worked on a metal framework offers a flexible, living field of work from which humor is not absent. One need only see his cantatrices to be immediately convinced. Michel Charpentier offers us a humanity that swings between tragedy and comedy, and the discourse he maintains appears to me more indulgent than the image he reflects back to us of this world.