And the local coverage is superb!
The La Montagne newspaper reports (Read the article in French):
The 2015 exhibition of the Museum of the Visitation breaks tradition from those of the previous exhibitions: the embroidered banners and other priestly vestments give way to the moving images showing the lives of the Visitandines in Moulins through the centuries.
Everything begins in 1616 with the installation of a small religious community that will acquire great fame quickly enough with the arrival within it of the widow of the Duke of Montmorency beheaded by order of Richelieu.
Thanks to donations from the wealthy widow exiled in Moulins, and many others, the Visitation built a vast monastery that later became the Banville school.
In the exhibition, there are objects that belonged to the Duchess of Montmorency who will gradually renounce her property to become a the contemplative sister.
The exhibition shows also unpublished drawings and paintings reflecting the Moulinois environment of the monastery.
To evoke the modern period, the exhibition shows a number of pictures of the daily lives of sisters working in the fields, the garden, and even the truck transport for the first vote open to women in 1946.
An area of the exhibition is particularly moving: it is painted in the miniature style of Fra Angelico by a sister artist, Louis-Angélique Gilbin in the first half of the twentieth century.
Emotion is also the dominant feeling from this iconography and the objects that make up this new exhibition. We advise visitors to take the audio specially created for the event guide. One can then fully grasp the depth of the still lives of these women who have decided a to escape the noise of the world to better save it.
Hervé Moisan
Translated by Visitation Spirit
Click for Museum website
Read extract of the book
Read French article in the Village of Moulins Magazine:
www.ville-moulins.fr/IMG/pdf/dral_212_mai_2015_4.pdf