The Musée du Louvre has acquired its first video work, a piece by the Algeria-born artist Mohamed Bourouissa.
The work, Les 4 temps (The 4 Seasons), focuses on the Tuileries Gardens, the famous public thoroughfare linking the Paris museum to the Place de la Concorde. It will be presented in the Salle de la Chapelle, overlooking the garden from 22 October-19 January 2026.
Donatien Grau, the Louvre's head of contemporary programmes says: “We wanted to do, for the first time, a video portrait of this garden—the largest in the centre of Paris, and the only attached institutionally to a major museum.”
The work is linked to Bourouissa’s life and work. In the distance, visitors can see the 4 Temps mall in La Défense, the Paris suburb where Bourouissa was raised.
Prior to this acquisition, the Louvre invited Bourouissa to present a new video each week for an entire year via its Instagram channel. Between February 2024 and February 2025, the project has reached millions of viewers.
“Fifty-two weeks and 52 videos—we could follow the life of the garden for an entire year, across the four seasons,” Grau explains. “After that, the videos were removed from the Instagram channel and Mohamed turned them into a stand-alone piece, for which he also composed the music, recording the vibrations of the plants of the garden.”
Grau adds that the museum is “very proud” that the video has now entered the Louvre collection. It has done so as part of the histoire du Louvre programme, which focuses on referential contemporary or historic works that reflect the history of the institution.
“Mohamed was the right artist; he is one of the greatest video artists of our time, has engaged with the logics [workings] of garden, as well as with the history of art that the Louvre embodies,” Grau concludes.
