Galerie 41

The French village has always needed a room like this — a neutral space where an artist can hang work for a fortnight without the overhead of a permanent gallery, and where a visitor can walk in without having to buy anything. Galerie 41 is that room for Barbizon.

It is described locally as "une galerie qui appartient à tous" — a gallery that belongs to everyone. The Mairie manages the space and announces each show, which rotate weekly or fortnightly through the year. The artists who exhibit here are working contemporaries, not collected names: a sculptor who works in wood, a ceramicist with new pieces, a photographer who has been shooting the forest. The shows are modest in scale and often very good.

The address puts it two doors down from the Cercle Laure Henry, which runs on a similar logic under a different management. Between the two of them, 41 and 43 Grande Rue form a quiet corridor of open-access contemporary art in the middle of a village best known for what was painted here a hundred and fifty years ago.