The Legion of Honor Opens ‘Eternal Paris’ September 5, Included With General Admission

The Legion of Honor opens Eternal Paris: Photographing the City of Light on Saturday, September 5. The show gathers nearly 50 photographs of Paris made in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it runs through April 4, 2027. Admission is included in the general museum ticket, so it does not carry the surcharge that the Legion’s ticketed exhibitions do.

What Is in the Show

The photographs come from the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, the museums’ own works-on-paper collection, and the Fine Arts Museums say many have never been exhibited before. The names on the wall labels are the ones that built the photographic record of the city: Edouard Baldus, Charles Marville, Andre Adolphe Eugene Disderi, Louis Emile Durandelle, Eugene Atget and Brassai.

Three threads run through it. There are early pictures of the monuments, including Baldus prints of the Louvre and the Tuileries from an 1858 album of Paris views. There are photographs of the ruins left by the Paris Commune of 1871, among them Franck’s picture of the Rue Royale and Disderi’s Pont d’Asnieres. And there is Atget’s record of a city on the edge of the modern age, plus work that presents Paris as a center of artistic life, such as a portrait of the painter Jean-Leon Gerome in his studio.

The museum’s argument is that the Paris most people carry in their heads was assembled by photographers rather than observed firsthand. The pictures are the evidence.

Where It Sits in the Legion’s Fall

The timing matters if you are planning one trip. The Etruscans: From the Heart of Ancient Italy, the Legion’s ticketed exhibition, closes September 20. For the two weeks between September 5 and September 20 both shows are on in the same building, and Eternal Paris is the one you do not pay extra for.

Also at the Legion, through July 25, 2027, is Miro: Proof Against All, a focused look at Joan Miro’s 1958 artist book with the poet Paul Eluard, drawn from the Logan Collection of Illustrated Books.

If You Go

The Legion of Honor is in Lincoln Park at 100 34th Avenue, at Clement Street, in the Richmond District. It is open Tuesday through Sunday, 9:30am to 5:15pm, and closed Mondays. Eternal Paris is installed in Gallery 22.

The 18 Muni bus serves Lincoln Park near the museum entrance. Driving, there is a free lot at the museum, and it fills on weekend afternoons.

Exhibition dates, gallery, checklist and admission terms are from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and its 2026 advance exhibition schedule. For dates when admission costs nothing at all, see our guide to free museum days in San Francisco, and our monthly guide tracks what else is on around the city.

Photo: GordonMakryllos, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.