French painter Claire Tabouret's full-scale maquettes for six new stained-glass windows at Notre-Dame Cathedral go on public display at Paris's Grand Palais museum through March 15. The designs, chosen from 110 submissions in an international competition, depict the Pentecost and will be fabricated by the historic atelier Simon-Marq. The new windows replace 19th-century lights by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc and Jean-Baptiste Lassus, which survived the 2019 fire but are being replaced at the direction of French President Emmanuel Macron and Archbishop Laurent Ulrich.
The decision to commission a contemporary artist for the windows has sparked significant controversy, with a petition against the move gathering over 147,000 signatures. Tabouret's project joins a lineage of contested artistic interventions in historic Parisian sites—such as the Buren columns and I.M. Pei's Louvre Pyramid—that later became beloved landmarks. The outcome will test how tradition and contemporary art can coexist in one of the world's most iconic religious and cultural monuments.