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A documentary created by artist Prune Nourry, filmmaker Vincent Lorca and Google Arts & Culture uses generative AI to recreate the Paris studios of historical women sculptors. The film accompanies Nourry’s “Visionaries” exhibition at the Petit Palais, running from October 20, 2026, to January 30, 2027.
Artist Prune Nourry and Google Arts & Culture have created a 10-minute documentary using generative AI to reconstruct the studios of women sculptors who worked in Paris in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The film accompanies “Visionaries,” an exhibition at the Petit Palais featuring Nourry’s plaster portraits of 18 historical sculptors, and brings attention to artists whose working lives were often left out of the historical record.
The film was made with director Vincent Lorca after a year of research by three art historians, who collected letters, journals and photographic portraits related to women sculptors in Paris. Google says few historical photographs show the artists’ actual workspaces, leaving the project team with limited visual records from which to reconstruct the studios.
Lynn Cherny, creative technologist-in-residence at the Google Arts & Culture Lab, used Google generative AI and image-editing models to create studio scenes for sculptors including Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, Jane Poupelet and Camille Claudel. A custom tool built with Google Gemini was used to turn archival photographs into 3D models and animate camera paths, allowing viewers to move virtually through the reconstructed spaces.
In another sequence developed by Nourry and Lorca, image editing makes female students gradually fade from an archival photograph of Antoine Bourdelle’s studio, leaving the men in the image. The film’s creators describe this as a visual way to represent how women’s presence in art history was obscured. The film is installed in the museum galleries alongside the exhibition; a behind-the-scenes trailer is available online through Google Arts & Culture.
Making Women Sculptors Visible
The project brings together a museum exhibition and a documentary to address a gap in the surviving visual record: photographs of the studios where women sculptors worked are scarce. Reconstructing those spaces offers visitors a way to imagine the conditions of artistic work, while the film’s archival material and portraits provide evidence about the artists themselves.
The presentation also draws attention to the difference between women’s historical presence and their later representation. Google’s report says women were often represented in art history as models or muses, while their roles as artists received less attention. The fading-students sequence makes that erasure legible through an altered archival image, although it is a contemporary artistic interpretation rather than an original historical photograph.
For audiences, the exhibition’s relevance lies in putting the sculptors’ names and practices at the center of a museum presentation. The AI reconstructions extend that presentation beyond surviving documentation, but they also make it important to distinguish between archival evidence and newly generated visual material.
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The Records Behind the Reconstructions
“Visionaries” opened at the Petit Palais in Paris on October 20, 2026, coinciding with Art Basel Paris. It features monumental plaster portraits by Nourry honoring 18 historical female sculptors. The documentary was developed in parallel to expand on the women’s lives and creative legacies through research and visual storytelling.
The source report describes the artists as working in a predominantly male art world, amid social constraints and limited access to artistic training. Since the studios themselves were seldom photographed, the team drew on other materials, including correspondence, journals and portraits. Those sources informed the project, but they do not amount to direct photographic records of every reconstructed room.
Google describes the reconstructions as an application of its generative AI and image-editing tools. The scenes are therefore visual interpretations built from historical material, not newly discovered photographs. The project’s account does not provide a detailed description of how the team validated each architectural or object-level feature against surviving evidence.
““Because few historical photos of their actual workspaces exist,” the team used generative AI and image-editing models to bring the studios to life.”
— Google Arts & Culture, in its October 21, 2026 report
What the Recreated Rooms Can Show
The published account does not specify which features in each studio reconstruction are directly supported by archival documents and which were generated to complete the scenes. It also does not detail the review process used to assess the reconstructions’ historical accuracy. Viewers should therefore understand the virtual studios as AI-assisted interpretations based on research and limited source material, rather than exact photographic records.
The report provides no technical evaluation of the models’ reliability or explanation of how uncertainty is displayed to visitors. It also does not give further detail on the three art historians’ research methods or identify the full set of archival sources used for each sculptor. Those questions remain open in the information published with the announcement.
Exhibition Runs Through January
The “Visionaries” exhibition is scheduled to remain at the Petit Palais through January 30, 2027, with the documentary installation presented in the museum galleries. Google Arts & Culture has also published a behind-the-scenes trailer online. The source announcement does not list later screenings, touring plans or additional exhibition dates, so any further presentation of the film or sculptures has not been confirmed.
Key Questions
What is the Prune Nourry project?
It is a 10-minute documentary made by artist Prune Nourry, director Vincent Lorca and Google Arts & Culture. It uses AI-assisted imagery to reconstruct studios associated with historical women sculptors who worked in Paris.
Which sculptors are featured in the studio reconstructions?
The report names Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, Jane Poupelet and Camille Claudel as artists whose studios are brought to life. Nourry’s “Visionaries” exhibition presents plaster portraits honoring 18 historical female sculptors.
Are the reconstructed studios historical photographs?
No. The scenes are AI-assisted reconstructions made from archival photographs and research. Google says few historical photographs of the artists’ actual workspaces survive, and the published report does not identify every detail in the recreated rooms as independently verified.
Where and when can visitors see the project?
“Visionaries” is at the Petit Palais in Paris from October 20, 2026, through January 30, 2027. The documentary is installed in the museum galleries, and a behind-the-scenes trailer is available through Google Arts & Culture.
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