Riviera Pebbles Blog: Villa Arson, Nice

Posted on 18th Nov 2018 in Go & Do

Contemporary culture:Villa Arson

The Villa Arson hasn’t stopped pioneering since 1970. It opened as a cultural hybrid of arts university and museum, where it showcased the experimental output of students past and present. Given freedom to dabble, the shows are now dedicated to fields as diverse as woodcuts, short film, plastics and digital art.

The Villa Arson also offers an international residency program, where dilettante artistes can spray paint, bash metal, attack canvases and push coding to the limit. Casual visitors are therefore in for a shock. Each afternoon punters can stride alongside paint-splattered hippies and in-the-zone techies amid two hectares of Mediterranean gardens, colourfully alive with mimosa and bougainvillea.

Better still, the Villa Arson’s main program is housed inside an 18th-century Italianate villa. What aspiring artist could fail to feel inspired by such a setting?

Villa Arson, Nice