Recreating the lost studios of women sculptors with Prune Nourry

Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, talented female sculptors lived and worked across Paris. Despite social constraints and limited access to artistic training, these pioneers made their mark in a predominantly male art world. Yet for a long time, women appeared in art history primarily as models or muses, while their roles as active artists were pushed into the background.

On October 20, a new exhibition titled "Visionaries" opens at the Petit Palais in Paris, coinciding with Art Basel Paris. The exhibition presents monumental plaster portraits sculpted by Prune Nourry, celebrating 18 historical female sculptors and their creative legacies.

To expand on their lives, Prune and Google Arts & Culture collaborated with film director Vincent Lorca on a 10-minute documentary. The project builds on a year of research during which three art historians gathered letters, journals, and photographic portraits of women sculptors who lived and worked in Paris. Because few historical photos of their actual workspaces exist, Lynn Cherny, creative technologist-in-residence at the Google Arts & Culture Lab used Google’s generative AI and image editing models to bring to life the studios of sculptors like Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, Jane Poupelet, and Camille Claudel.

Using a custom tool built with Google Gemini, the team created 3D models from archival photos to animate camera paths, allowing viewers to move virtually through the historical studios.

In another sequence conceived by Prune and Lorca, AI image editing is used to make the female students slowly fade from an archival photograph of Antoine Bourdelle’s studio, leaving only the men. The effect visually demonstrates how these talented women vanished from history.

"Visionaries" runs at the Petit Palais from October 20, 2026, through January 30, 2027, alongside the film installation in the museum galleries and a behind-the-scenes trailer online on Google Arts & Culture.

To discover more stories of trailblazing women who have shaped global culture, explore more Google Arts & Culture initiatives, such as Surfacing Women in Smithsonian History with the Smithsonian, Road to Equality, Women in India: Unheard Stories, and the Artemisia Gentileschi retrospective.

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