FIAA - Fonds International d'Art Actuel

FIAA (Fonds International d'Art Actuel) is a contemporary art exhibition center in the heart of Le Mans, on the La Visitation site, between the Peach restaurant and the Racines wine bar. The center presents about four exhibitions a year devoted to living artists who are part of today's art scene, in painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography and ceramics. The current exhibition (2026) is devoted to Icelandic artist Erró, a figure of the Figuration Narrative movement.

Beyond its temporary program, FIAA holds a permanent collection of nearly 400 works (from the Le Mans city collection, the Lefranc & Bourgeois company collection and the personal collection of Lucien Ruimy), a selection of which is shown roughly every two years. The center offers guided tours on Saturday mornings by reservation, visual arts workshops tied to current exhibitions, and an on-site shop. It is a cultural venue open to all audiences, in the heart of downtown.

A bit of history

FIAA opened in September 2020 on the initiative of Lucien Ruimy, an artist and organizer of the Puls'Art fair, in a contemporary building set within the historic La Visitation site. The center was designed to house the city of Le Mans collection as well as those of the Lefranc & Bourgeois company and of Lucien Ruimy himself, with the ambition of offering a panorama of recent international artistic creation.

Its location is part of the overall redevelopment of the La Visitation site, a former Visitandine convent completed in 1723. After the French Revolution it was turned into barracks, a prison, a hospital and a weaving workshop, then a gendarmerie, prison and courthouse until the early 1990s. The prison closed for good in 2010 and was converted into a cultural and commercial hub that opened to the public in 2019.