Exposition “Varian Fry, les chemins de l’exil”

On August 14, 1940, Varian Mackey Fry, a young American journalist commissioned by the Emergency Rescue Committee, set up in New York two months earlier, arrived in Marseille.

He had $3,000, a list of 200 people to rescue and a letter of recommendation from the wife of the President of the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt.

His mission: to help anti-Nazi artists and intellectuals obtain visas and escape the fascist threat.

Initially scheduled to last three weeks, Varian Fry?s mission was eventually extended to thirteen months, until he was deported by the Vichy authorities. Over 1,800 people, including some of the greatest artists and thinkers of the 20th century, were rescued thanks to him.

The exhibition evokes the figure of an extraordinary man, who in 1994 became the first American to be awarded the title of "Righteous Among the Nations". The exhibition features paintings by Marc Chagall, André Masson and Wifredo Lam, as well as Surrealist drawings.