Miaou! participatory exhibition at the Muséum de Bordeaux

expo bordeaux / exposition / Bordeaux culture / miaou! / chat

1 September 2026 - 3 January 2027

Until January 3, 2027, the Muséum de Bordeaux is hosting the participatory exhibition Miaou!.

The cat, between science, culture and imagination

From June 17, 2026 to January 3, 2027, the Muséum de Bordeaux presents Miaou!, an exhibition designed with the public and devoted to an everyday animal that nonetheless keeps its share of mystery: the cat.
Both an indoor companion and a formidable hunter, an unmissable icon of popular culture, the cat has fascinated and intrigued people for a very long time. Its constant presence at our side, in our homes as much as in our imagery, creates the illusion that we know it well. In reality, many aspects of its biology, behavior, and social role remain little understood.
Miaou! invites visitors to dive into the many dimensions of this animal. The first part of the visit looks at it as an animal: sensory perception, behaviors, evolutionary history, its bond with humans, and its relationship to its environment.
The exhibition then explores the cat's place in our culture, where it has settled in for good, to the point of never really leaving (a habit that, in truth, hardly suits its nature). Worshipped, feared, celebrated in the arts, literature, film, or pop culture, the feline has reinvented itself across the ages, forever changing face.

A creation shared with local residents

For this new participatory exhibition, the Muséum de Bordeaux brought together about fifteen people, who worked for eight months on building the project.
This group collectively defined the exhibition's main themes, thought through the content to present, dreamed up display formats, and shaped the project's visual and narrative identity. Though mostly newcomers to museum design, these participants brought their own perspectives, their enthusiasms, and the stories they wanted to tell about this animal.
The result is a one-of-a-kind exhibition, born from the meeting of many different viewpoints and sensibilities. By directly involving citizens in its design, the Muséum is testing out another way of doing science outreach: more horizontal, more collaborative, more attentive to each person's lived experience.