Claire Tabouret’s Stained-Glass Windows for Notre-Dame Divide French Society, with a Legal Threat Looming

On a recent visit to the Notre-Dame de Paris, the 12th-century cathedral was bustling with a steady flow of visitors who had come inside the Gothic monument from a wintery afternoon. It seemed more packed than it had been before its closure in 2019, after the collapse of its iconic spire and roof in a horrific blaze. But the line to get in moved quickly, and once under its vaulted ceiling, the sheer size of the structure left room to linger. I had gone to see the stained-glass windows designed by Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc in the 19th century, adorning six of the south-side chapels along the nave—before they are replaced. Viollet-le-Duc’s windows, geometric and floral-patterned stained-glass grisailles, or light gray-scale panes accented with colorful sections, were installed as part of his major restoration of Notre-Dame between 1844 and 1864. Meanwhile, earlier that week, I had gone to the Grand Palais, equally bustling, to see life-size models of the proposed substitutes, a figurative retelling of the Pentecost, by contemporary artist Claire Tabouret. These two sets of windows are at the center of a so-called “stained-glass quarrel,” as the French media regularly calls it, or the more poetic “windows of discord,” as Le Monde put it. In late 2023, following the 2019 blaze that nearly engulfed all of Notre-Dame, French president Emmanuel Macron, in agreement with Laurent Ulrich, the Archbishop of Paris, announced a project to commission a new set of stained-glass windows by a living artist for six of the seven stained-glass windows in the chapels along the southern side of the nave, as a “contemporary gesture” to breathe new life into the centuries-old structure. From eight finalists, Tabouret’s six painted designs, which will be translated into stained glass with master artisans at the Atelier Simon-Marq, were ultimately selected in late 2024, for the commission of a lifetime—but the trouble had already been brewing well before then. At the crux of the controversy is the fact that Tabouret’s new windows would push out Viollet-le-Duc’s undamaged ones. Advocates for the project argue that since the windows date to the 19th century, instead of the Middle Ages, they are fair game to be replaced in a monument that has historically integrated new artistic elements to its walls over the centuries. The goal is to add “meaning” and “beauty,” through the story of the Pentecost, while maintaining “coherence” in this part of Notre-Dame with a nearby figurative window depicting the Tree of Jesse, according to Philippe Jost, who has led the Notre Dame restoration since the fire. (The Tree of Jesse window is the only figurative stained-glass one on the same, ground-floor side of the nave as Viollet-le-Duc’s geometric ones.) Another dismissal of the 19th-century windows has to do with them being grisailles and therefore not as colorful as one might expect of a stained-glass window. Tabouret’s design, by contrast, is a riot of explosive color. But as a classified UNESCO heritage site, and per guidelines set by the 1964 Venice Charter, subtracting anything as major as these towering, ornate windows from the Notre-Dame isn’t quite that simple. A petition against this “contemporary gesture” has garnered over 335,000 signatures, and leading up to the announcement of Tabouret’s winning designs, the CNPA, the nation’s commission on architecture and heritage, voted against it in July 2024, while the Academie des Beaux-Arts issued a statement opposing it in December 2023. Many have also interpreted the project as Macron’s attempt at leaving his cultural stamp on the cathedral and have called out his over-spending of public funds. But amid the discord is also a good deal of confusion both in France and abroad. To date, it’s unclear whether the commissioned windows designed by Tabouret, on view at the Grand Palais through Sunday, will ever make it into the Notre-Dame as planned. “Haven’t you heard,” one red-vested Norte-Dame worker asked me as they directed tourists. “They called it all off. It’s not happening,” the worker said, with a gleeful smile, when I asked where the new windows would be placed. Another worker concurred. Even well-informed visitors I overheard discussing modern stained-glass windows installed on the second floor of the cathedral a century after Viollet-le Duc’s windows, didn’t know about Tabouret’s project. But that isn’t the full story. Sources tell ARTnews that Tabouret’s designs are in fact being interpreted into colorful glass panes. Bernard Blistène, former director of the Centre Pompidou, who presided over the selection committee for the window commission, said Tabouret and the Atelier Simon Marq are “ardently working in Reims to produce the windows,” which should be done and installed, as scheduled, by the end of 2026. That is, if a looming legal battle doesn’t interfere. The Paris-based group Sites & Monuments says it plans to block in court any attempt to remove Viollet-le-Duc’s windows. As soon as a construction permit to that end is officially delivered—a step that is widely expected in the coming weeks or months, though it is not a guarantee—the group will have their chance to legally contest it. (The regional prefect tasked with granting a construction permit, could also theoretically refuse it, though that is unlikely; his office did not respond to requests for comment.) “We will urgently seize a judge to suspend the installation of the windows, to allow the judge to analyze the case,” Julien Lacaze, president of Sites & Monuments, told ARTnews. Lacaze’s group is also appealing a November administrative court decision that shot down its argument claiming the body in charge of managing the Notre-Dame has no authority to commission a contemporary art installation. Lacaze thinks his group has a case for a main trial they aim to bring over the legality of the project itself. “If we can prove that the work of Viollet-le-Duc is of public interest, from an artistic or historic point of view, along with the entire, classified historic cathedral, we could annul the [expected] administrative decision to grant a construction permit,” said Lacaze. (The cathedral’s current plan for the Viollet-le-Dec windows is to move them to a site near Notre-Dame where they could be publicly displayed.) Like many opponents to the project, Lacaze said he is not against contemporary art as it were. “For us, adding something is not a problem—we could add windows in the cathedral belfries, for instance—but to subtract is another issue,” he said. What’s in a Contemporary Gesture? Having visited Tabouret’s Grand Palais exhibition ahead of my visit to Notre-Dame, I was able to easily spot the designated windows awaiting replacement because the artist has painted parts of Viollet-le-Duc’s nature-inspired windows into her own design as an homage to the artistic predecessor to whose legacy she will now be forever tied. Now 44, Tabouret has been a rising talent of the Parisian and international contemporary art scenes for about a decade. Known for her color-rich, expressive and haunting figurative works, the artist, who is also currently the subject of a retrospective at the Museum Voorlinden in the Netherlands, has been thrust into the global spotlight since being selected, somewhat unexpectedly, for the commission. At the opening of her Dutch exhibition, Tabouret told the Guardian, “It’s not very French to change stuff,” in reference to the Notre-Dame controversy. Regarding the commission’s critics, she added, “These are people who hate the project, no matter what.” In an in-depth 2025 profile with Le Monde, Tabouret took a more conciliatory tone in describing her decision to take on the thorny Notre-Dame project. Because her mother is English, her father French, and they come from differing social classes, she explained that she has felt a desire since her youth “to bring people together, to say: ‘Wait, let me explain what the other side is like.’ Finding myself today in a project that sparks controversy and trying to bring people together, without arrogance or certainty, I tell myself that perhaps this is my destiny. That this is why I am an artist: because I can embrace doubt, human ambiguity, the fact of not knowing.” Tabouret declined to comment further for this story, referring back to her comments to the Guardian and Le Monde. But her comments to Le Monde, also point to the heart of her approach to the commission.The works, which would reach high up into the cathedral’s Gothic arches, depict individuals of varied backgrounds and ethnicities gathering together. One of the strongest of these is a frontal portrait of the Virgin Mary, who stands out as a moving symbol of female strength. They have also convinced some initial skeptics. “I was swept away,” said Louvre curator Nicolas Milovanovic, who admitted to having initially signed the petition against the contemporary window project. “To me, these stained-glass windows appear to be worthy of Notre-Dame,” he said in a February YouTube video. At the Tabouret exhibition, my questions to visitors about the stained-glass debate again led to unexpected responses, but the tables had surprisingly turned. No one questioned whether the new windows would be installed in Notre-Dame, and several people said they had not known (until I asked about it) that any trade-off with existing windows was planned. While the Grand Palais show refers to Viollet-le-Duc’s original designs, it does not highlight the fact that they are still hanging in the cathedral, or that they were recently restored. “Do you mean the original windows weren’t damaged?” asked an incredulous Vivianne Cousin. Her friend Evelyne Roussel sarcastically quipped, “They must have come up with this project because the French state has a lot of money.” (The entire project was given an initial budget of €4 million, or about $4.6 million.) ‘An Integral Part of the Vision’ The 2019 fire at Notre-Dame inspired art historian Barry Bergdoll and architectural historian Martin Bressani to cocurate an exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery on Viollet-le-Duc. (The physical exhibition is on view in Manhattan until May 24; it also is accompanied by an online version.) Bergdoll said the “aftermath of the fire in Notre Dame seemed like a moment to understand the diversity and complexity of Viollet-le-Duc’s creation. It’s not put together with polemical intent.” The exhibition explores Viollet-le-Duc’s architectural theory and how it was informed by his many drawings, which provided the basis for his restoration of many of France’s medieval monuments, which also included the Basilica of Saint Denis, Mont Saint-Michel, Sainte-Chapelle, and the medieval fortress-walls of Carcassonne. To Bergdoll, Viollet-le-Duc’s Norte-Dame windows, “are an integral part of the vision, the decoration, and particularly of the lighting and luminosity of the cathedral. The argument that they’re grisailles and that they don’t represent subjects and therefore are expendable is completely absurd,” he said. The windows’ light gray, non-figurative glass allows more light to enter the cathedral, achieved via its contrast between light grays and colorful accents. The goal was also to “create a homogeneous system that governs the entire cathedral,” Bressani said. “That’s what Viollet-le-Duc was concerned about: bringing an overall coherence in the color and lighting system of the cathedral.” He added that the bright contemporary imagery of Tabouret’s designs would “destroy the overall experience of the Gothic cathedral.” Blistène, the head of the jury that selected Tabouret, bristled at this accusation. Indeed, the artist chose her colors so that when combined together, they would form a white light, he said. (The cathedral also asked her to maintain the interior’s overall, existing lighting.) “Saying that Claire Tabouret’s proposal destroys the harmony of the existing windows,” Blistène said in an email, “is truly a case of not wanting to recognize that, on the contrary, her proposal is extremely respectful of the theme and its iconography, of the colors and the light emanating from the building.” Marc Chauveau, a Dominican friar who also sat on the selection committee that chose Tabouret, pointed out that the walls of the chapels in Notre-Dame were stripped bare of the murals designed by Viollet-le-Duc’s restoration and that since that destructive event in the 1960s, they have not necessarily cohered to his overall vision. Tabouret agreed, saying in her Le Monde interview that there is a lack of coherence to the southern chapel decor, pointing to the figurative Tree of Jesse window. “[Y]ou can clearly see that the argument of a Viollet-le-Duc vision doesn’t hold water,” she said, “that it wasn’t his choice, but rather a decision made by default—a question of budget?” There is also the view that the cathedral is an unfinished, work-in-progress, which benefited from centuries of what was then contemporary art over its 863-year history. “Throughout the centuries, the church always trusted the artists of the time,” said Chauveau, noting that the approach also had the liturgical purpose of reaching new generations via contemporary forms of expression. “The desire for an education adapted to the minds, sensibilities and constraints of each era – has allowed Notre-Dame to be, over the years, a place for expression of contemporary art,” wrote Archbishop Laurent Ulrich in the catalog for the Grand Palais exhibition. “We wanted [the cathedral] to remain faithful to her vocation, by adorning her with new works of art that speak to our time, that speak for our time.” Bressani, the art historian, countered that such additions, particularly under the direction of Viollet-le-Duc, were “set within a shared, Gothic architectural language” that used changing artistic trends in service of “restoring the cathedral to its proper form,” as best and as creatively, as possible. Tabouret’s proposed windows certainly steps away from any form of neo-Gothic interpretation, but whether or not they cohere to the centuries-old elegance of Notre-Dame will likely only be determined if they are ever installed.