Young People of Color Flocked to This Show. It Made Them Feel Seen.

New York Times

10 hours ago

It's August in Paris: Seemingly all of the city's residents have left for vacation. Store shutters have been pulled down, cafe terrace chairs removed and locked away. The streets are quiet and still.
But the National Museum of the History of Immigration has been buzzing. Last Wednesday afternoon, the crowd was so thick it required sharp elbows or lots of patience to see certain displays. And most of the visitors didn't fit the typical Parisian museum-going mold: They were young and of color.
The exhibition they crowded in to see was 'Banlieues Chéries,' or 'Beloved Suburbs,' a show of 200 photographs, paintings and installations that aimed to confront stereotypes about the banlieues, which in France are synonymous with poverty, run-down subsidized housing, new immigrants and conflicts with the police.
And crowd in they did. Influencers on TikTok and Instagram enthused about the show, and more than 150,000 visitors had seen it by the time it closed on Sunday. That is more than double the museum's average exhibition attendance and the biggest hit it's had since opening in 2007, according to the museum's general director, Constance Rivière. More than 40 percent were aged 18-25, and many were from the suburbs.
'We really recognize ourselves in the exhibition,' said Théodine Massengo, 18, who had traveled to the show from her home in Noisy-le-Grand, an eastern suburb of Paris. It was her first time ever visiting a museum other than on school trips, she said.
'It was like reconnecting with a part of my childhood, so to speak, but in a good way,' said Faïda Laher, 25, writing her wishes for a 'dream suburb' on a small piece of paper to tack up on a wall where hundreds of such visitors' messages had formed a collage. (Many wished for less violence, less racism and a more equal society.)
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