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A 10-minute documentary made by artist Prune Nourry, director Vincent Lorca and Google Arts & Culture uses generative AI to recreate the studios of women sculptors who worked in Paris. It accompanies Nourry’s “Visionaries” exhibition at the Petit Palais, on view from October 20, 2026, to January 30, 2027.
Artist Prune Nourry and Google Arts & Culture have released a 10-minute documentary using generative AI to recreate the studios of women sculptors who lived and worked in Paris in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The film accompanies Nourry’s “Visionaries” exhibition at the Petit Palais, which opened October 20 and presents monumental plaster portraits of 18 historical women sculptors.
The project followed a year of research by three art historians, who gathered letters, journals and photographic portraits related to the sculptors. Google says there are few historical photographs of the artists’ actual workspaces, so the film uses AI-generated imagery to offer viewers imagined reconstructions rather than documentary photographs of the studios.
Lynn Cherny, a creative technologist-in-residence at the Google Arts & Culture Lab, used Google’s generative AI and image-editing models to develop scenes featuring sculptors including Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, Jane Poupelet and Camille Claudel. The team also used a custom tool built with Google Gemini to create 3D models from archival photographs and animate camera paths through the resulting spaces.
Another sequence, conceived by Nourry and director Vincent Lorca, alters an archival photograph of Antoine Bourdelle’s studio. Through AI image editing, female students in the photograph gradually fade away, leaving the men. Google describes the sequence as a visual demonstration of how women artists disappeared from historical narratives. The museum is showing the film installation in its galleries; a behind-the-scenes trailer is available online through Google Arts & Culture.
Making Women Artists Visible
The film addresses a gap between the surviving record and the history it is meant to represent. According to Google, women sculptors in Paris faced social constraints and limited access to artistic training, while art history often cast women as models or muses rather than as artists. Reconstructing their working spaces gives the exhibition a way to focus on artistic practice, even where visual evidence of those spaces is scarce.
The work also makes its method part of the story: AI-generated interiors can help audiences imagine an absent environment, but they are not proof of what a particular studio looked like. The distinction matters for viewers encountering historical reconstruction in a museum setting. Here, the reconstructions are presented as a creative response to limited archival material, alongside research drawn from letters, journals and photographs.
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From Archival Research to Film
“Visionaries” brings together Nourry’s monumental plaster portraits of 18 historical women sculptors. The exhibition opened at the Petit Palais on October 20, 2026, during the period of Art Basel Paris, and is scheduled to remain on view until January 30, 2027. The documentary extends that exhibition by turning the research into a short film installation.
The source report describes a collaboration between Nourry, Lorca and Google Arts & Culture, with Cherny handling the AI-based studio work. The historical material informed the project, while generative tools supplied visual settings where photographs of the original workspaces were scarce. The film therefore combines archival research and interpretive digital reconstruction; it does not claim to restore studios from complete photographic records.
““Because few historical photos of their actual workspaces exist,””
— Google Arts & Culture
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Limits of the Reconstructed Studios
The source report does not specify which archival photographs were used to model each studio, how the team checked the generated interiors against historical evidence, or how much of each room was inferred rather than documented. It also does not name all three art historians or provide a full account of the sources consulted for each sculptor.
The reconstructions should not be read as confirmed images of the artists’ actual workspaces: Google says photographs of those spaces are scarce and describes the scenes as creations made with generative AI. The report does not provide independent assessments of the models’ historical accuracy or details about the specific AI models beyond the mention of Google’s image-editing tools and a custom Gemini-based tool.
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Exhibition Runs Through January
The “Visionaries” exhibition is scheduled to remain at the Petit Palais through January 30, 2027, with the documentary installation shown in the museum galleries. Google Arts & Culture has also posted a behind-the-scenes trailer online. The source does not announce further screenings, additional exhibition dates or plans to release more information about the AI reconstructions.
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Key Questions
What is the “Visionaries” project?
It is an exhibition by Prune Nourry featuring monumental plaster portraits of 18 historical women sculptors, accompanied by a documentary that recreates some of their Paris studios using AI.
Where and when can people see the exhibition?
“Visionaries” is at the Petit Palais in Paris. It opened October 20, 2026, and is scheduled to run through January 30, 2027.
Are the reconstructed studios historical photographs?
No. Google says few photographs of the actual workspaces survive. The film uses generative AI and image editing to create interpretive reconstructions informed by archival material.
Which sculptors appear in the documentary?
The report names Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, Jane Poupelet and Camille Claudel among the sculptors whose studios are brought to life in the film.
Who made the documentary?
The project was developed by artist Prune Nourry and Google Arts & Culture with film director Vincent Lorca. Google’s Lynn Cherny worked on the AI-based studio visualizations.
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