After passing through an immense vestibule devoted to charms and boniments, the vast nave opens up, full of color... We're back in the ring! projected among clowns, clowns and acrobats, among the traces among the traces of vanished shows. In this exhibition like no other, director Macha Makeïeff invites us inside an imaginary stage, a sensitive tale of fragility and fantasy. Here, works of art float above our heads, while others parade, pose, exhibit, illusionize, pile up and offer themselves to us like moments in a vagabond life. There are a thousand things to discover and guess in the half-light as much as in the light ! In this exhibition-show, you can wander, dream and rub shoulders with reality.

Here, fairground objects and artists' works are combined with fantasy. On boards, on small theaters, on totem poles, among circus beasts, we discover masterpieces from the Ballets russes to an acrobat by Niki de Saint Phalle, works by Miquel Barceló, Ingmar Bergman, Robert Bresson, Claude Cahun, Marc Chagall, Charlie Chaplin, Colette, Gustave Doré, Joseph Faverot, W. C. Fields, Pier-Paolo Pasolini, Pablo Picasso, Georges Rouault, Lucien Simon, Pierrick Sorin, Jacques Tati, Gérard Traquandi, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, André Valensi, Agnès Varda, Jean Veber, Wim Wenders, Jérôme Zonder... And young artists to discover.

It's a celebration of the artist as entertainer, a tale where visitors are welcomed among the clowns and poets, their world of poor things and big dreams. Gradually, the viewer realizes that the spectacle of the destiny of these artists of wire and trestle is that of his own life. A life of fetishes, chimeras, wounds and redemption.

The circus and fairground art collections housed at Mucem are particularly interesting in that they are not limited to prestigious pieces. The museum preserves trunks used by the artists on tour, and stage costumes with the patina of the use each artist has made of them. Clowns' make-up boxes are just as necessary to the creation of their characters as their most brilliant and expensive custom-made coats. In show business, perhaps more than in other fields, we know that accessories are essential. With this in mind, over 100 pieces from the Mucem collections are presented here: wooden puppet heads (from the 19th and 20th centuries), clown coats embroidered with thousands of sequins, stage costumes and artists' luggage.Alongside them, visitors to this spectacular exhibition will discover objects from collectors and artists including Bartabas, decommissioned props, costumes, sets from past shows, things, images and beasts from Macha Makeïeff's studio. We also admire some of the most famous works (including Pablo Picasso's 1923 portrait of Joaquín Salvado as Harlequin), right down to a whistle that once belonged to a clown whose name has disappeared from the history books.Worn-out trapezes float in the air above sculptures by artists such as Niki de Saint Phalle. The dazzling is placed alongside the everyday.

Numerous works are on loan from the Musée d'Orsay, the Centre Pompidou, Mamac, the Musée des Beaux-arts de Quimper, the Musée Picasso, the New National Museum of Monaco, the Musée National Fernand Léger, and many others.

Last but not least, this exhibition would not have been possible without the exceptional loan of Dr Alain Frère, who has entrusted Mucem with nearly 170 works from his collection.

Painter Gérard Traquandi created 32 watercolors especially for the exhibition.