Give Thanks for French Culture in November

After the candy-fueled chaos of Halloween, November offers a mellow reprieve—at least at first, until our days are claimed once again by Thanksgiving plans, Black Friday sales. Before the holiday season gets its stressy grip, enjoy our picks of the best of French art, film, and festivities around the US this month.

This month, Angers France Week celebrates the connection between Austin, TX, and its sister city in the Loire region. The events include a wine-tasting evening, musical performances, and the centerpiece, New French Cinema Week, curated by the Austin Film Society in partnership with Angers’ Premiers Plans festival. The lineup of electrifying debuts and new work includes Alice Diop’s tense psychological drama, Saint Omer, Louda Ben Salah-Cazanas’s romantic debut, The World After Us, and Vincent Maël Cardona’s, Les Magnetiques (Magnetic Beats, pictured), which follows a teen boy in 1980s France obsessed with New Wave music and his brother’s girlfriend—and won the César for best new film in 2021. Series passes come with a discount and a ticket to the opening night reception on November 10.

November 10–13

AFS cinema, 6406 N I-35 Suite 3100

Austin, Texas

In New York, November 1o marks the opening reception of a new solo exhibition by Paris-based contemporary artist Eva Jospin. “Wandering,” her first show in North America, offers visitors the chance to explore intricate, immersive worlds evoking the forest and the natural environment, which the artist constructs entirely out of layered cardboard. Although she is best known for these large-scale sculptural creations, Jospin also creates stunning drawings and embroidery, and several of these recent works will be included in the exhibition.

November 10–December 21 (reception with the artist on November 10)

French Institute–Alliance Française

22 East 60th Street, 1st Floor

New York, NY

You may already have a Thursday in late November earmarked for a celebration, but don’t let that stop you from getting the party going a week early. Thursday, November 17 is 2022’s release date for Beaujolais Nouveau, the young, fruity red that’s the essence of a “glou-glou” wine. This year, there are tastings and parties all across the country and all weekend long, from San Diego (hosted by the Alliance Française) to Denver (where it’s the annual fundraiser for the Rocky Mountain French Chamber of Commerce), and Western Massachusetts, where you can enjoy a wine workshop at the Berkshire Botanical Garden. In Washington DC on Saturday night, the French Embassy is hosting a swanky official celebration that includes wine tastings, live music, and dinner prepared by the embassy’s executive chef, Daniel Labonne. Or you can simply pick up a bottle at your nearest specialty wine store—it pairs well with turkey!

A year after his death at just 41 years old, luminaries from the world of couture and culture come together to discuss the impact and legacy of Virgil Abloh, the Black designer from St. Louis who enjoyed a meteoric rise to the highest echelon of the Paris fashion world. With a talent for mixing street style with high drama of haute couture, Abloh’s vision—and his mere presence—shook up the industry, via his own label, Off-White, and then through his role as creative director of menswear at Louis Vuitton. Fashion historian Florence Muller and curator Matthew Yokobosky join Ansel Thompson and Faye Mcleod of LVMH to discuss Abloh’s work, collaborations, and multifaceted cultural inspirations. Presented in partnership with Institut Français de la Mode, the in-person event includes a cocktail reception, and will also be livestreamed.

Thursday, November 17, 7pm

FIAF Skyroom

22 East 60th Street, 8th Floor

New York, NY.

In Chicago, a major new group exhibition sets out to show how the innovations of Caribbean diaspora artists pointed the way for many developments in contemporary art since the late 20th century. Curated by Carla Acevedo-Yates, Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s–Today places the Caribbean at the center of global geopolitical and cultural shifts since the 90s, especially the emerging importance of questions of identity and place. Weather patterns—a dramatic and transformative force in the region—stand as a metaphor for broader forms of change and predictions of the future. Alongside peer artists from Puerto Rico, Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and the southern United States, the French Caribbean artist and poet Jean Creuzet creates mixed-media  installations exploring the history of Martinique, the impact of European colonialism, and his own experience of diaspora. (Pictured above, detail from “Hiding behind the foliage. Search for Mygalia,” 2017.)

Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

220 East Chicago Avenue,

Chicago, Illinois

November 19–April 23, 2023

Joanna Scutts is a historian and critic, and the author of Hotbed: Bohemian Greenwich Village and the Secret Club that Sparked Modern Feminism and The Extra Woman: How Marjorie Hillis Led a Generation of Women to Live Alone and Like It.