Notre-Dame to get modern windows despite experts’ protests

The new panels will be the work of Claire Tabouret, a 43-year old French artist living in Los Angeles, who has publicly shown only one of the 70 designs she submitted to the jury.

The French government overruled incensed conservationists and decided to add a “modern touch” to the restored Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris with six new stained-glass windows, fulfilling a wish by President Emmanuel Macron.

The modern panels depicting Pentecost, to be installed in chapels on the south side of the cathedral, will replace the modest geometrical patterns of nineteenth-century windows that survived the 2019 blaze.

The National Heritage and Architecture Commission (CNPA), backed by a petition signed by almost 284,000 people, has vigourously opposed the change, arguing that the windows chosen by legendary nineteenth-century restorer Eugène Viollet-le-Duc must stay.

But Culture Minister Rashida Dati, echoing support from Macron and Archbishop Laurent Ulrich of Paris, overruled the consultative committee.

The new panels will be the work of Claire Tabouret, a 43-year old French artist living in Los Angeles. She has shown publicly only one of 70 designs she gave the jury, a panel showing figures drawn to a bright light.

“For me, who dreams of a living painting, stained glass is the ideal medium,” she told Le Monde.  “Each visit will be a new vision, the light dancing with the weather and the clouds in the sky.”

The “modern touch” that Macron wanted for the restored cathedral has been an issue of fantasy and outrage.  A flurry of proposals included a swimming pool on the roof and changing Biblical quotations projected on the interior walls.

When the cathedral reopened last December, the most obvious modern touches were simply new furniture for the altar and congregation.

Although opposed to modern windows, the CNPA “noted” the inevitable and backed a plan to exhibit the old windows in a future museum. Dati’s social media post about this was widely interpreted as approving the replacements.

La Tribune de l’Art, which spearheaded the petition defending the old windows, accused the culture minister of “a state lie” and reminded readers the CNPA had rejected a replacement twice.

The new stained glass should be installed by late next year, joining the far larger collection of older windows that beautify the cathedral.

Petition opposes modern stained glass for Notre-Dame

Out of the flames, into the light – Notre-Dame restored

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