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There is a growing appreciation for the arts in France as evidenced by emerging new art forms and wider public patronage. Although spending on cultural items and activities varies according to age, education, socio-economics, and geographical origin, the constant rise in household audiovisual equipment and the boom in museum visits and theatre attendance reflect the growing popularity of cultural activities across social categories.

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The government is waging an active policy of cultural dissemination through education, beginning with the training of its youngest citizens. Once limited, opportunities for education in the arts, especially in music and the visual arts, have been expanding since the 1980s. Today, a tight network of regional and municipal conservatories provides low-cost instruction in music, theatre, and dance. There are also a number of prestigious establishments for training future professionals, including two national music conservatories, the national fine arts school, the national academy for dramatic art, the national school for photography, and the European foundation for audiovisual professions (FEMIS). Additionally, for the past several years state television channels have been reserving a small amount of air time for cultural programmes. An example is the literary programme Bouillon de culture(formerly called Apostrophes) that Bernard Pivot has been presenting every Friday evening for the past 10 years. It has recently expanded to incorporate a broader range of cultural events. Similarly, a joint Franco-German channel called Arte has been broadcasting cultural programmes on a bilingual schedule since 1992. Arte only broadcasts in the evening so an educational channel, La Cinquième, occupies its wavelength throughout the day. It is the first European experiment of this kind.

In the early 1960s, André Malraux established Maisons des Jeunes et de la Culture (youth and culture centres) to attract more of the urban population to cultural events; thirty years on, these and other cultural venues are thriving. Many new theatres have been built throughout France while older ones are being renovated. Rock concert halls and music-hall theatres attract an average annual audience of 15 million people. Venues such as the Paris-Bercy Omnisports Park can seat up to 15,000 spectators, but even larger stadiums can host giant concerts such as one performed by the Rolling Stones at the Grand Stade de France in 1998. Popular Parisian venues, such as the Zénith, and similar projects in Montpellier and Toulon have inspired imitations up and down the country (in Lyon, Marseille, Nancy, Caen, Tours, etc.).

Museums too play a major role in making culture accessible. Thus, a new discipline, museology, aims to ensure that these shrines to beauty circulate works of art and promote their appreciation as well conserve them, as they were originally intended to do. The openings of the Georges Pompidou Centre for Contemporary Art, the Musée d'Orsay, the Picasso Museum in the Hôtel Salé, and the City of Science and Industry at La Villette in Paris, have given fresh impetus to museums throughout France. Nearly 80 museums have been established and/or renovated during the past 25 years. A notable example is the Fine Arts Museum in Lyon, which occupies the entire Palais Saint-Pierre, a 17th-century abbey renovated by the architects Philippe Dubois and Jean-Michel Wilmotte. Re-opening in April 1998 after a nine year and 400 million francs ($66.6 million) restoration project, it is the largest and wealthiest in Museum France after the Louvre. It boasts 6,300 works, including the Jacqueline Delubac bequest of Impressionist paintings, exhibited in a space of 15,000 sq meters. Prominent architects have also been commissioned to design several other museums outside Paris - for example, the Contemporary Art Museum in Lyon, housed as of 1995, in a building designed by Renzo Piano, and the Carré d'art in Nîmes designed by Norman Foster.

The dominant museum project has been the refurbishment of the Grand Louvre, which began in 1993 with the inauguration of the Richelieu wing. This section alone is as large as the entire Musée d'Orsay! Additionally, the renovated Denon wing opened to the public in the autumn of 1994 exhibiting Italian, Spanish and northern European sculpture collections, including Michelangelo's two well-known statues of a slave. The entire project was completed in 1997 with the opening of 35 new galleries devoted to French painting from the 17th through 19th centuries and the reorganization of the Antiquities section.

In all there are 34 national museums in France, of which 19 are located outside Paris, and nearly 900 museums under public supervision, generally belonging to local authorities. They are very successful, attracting over 70 million visitors a year. Art-lovers gather to admire the masterpieces in the permanent collections which contribute to the world heritage, as well as the temporary exhibitions (which have recently featured Matisse, Poussin, Cézanne and de La Tour).

With about 3,000 municipal libraries in France, (excluding ones in schools and universities), libraries remain popular cultural venues. Paris is home to several prestigious libraries, such as those in the Centre Georges Pompidou, and the Arsenal, the Sainte-Geneviève, and the Mazarine Libraries. A new National Library also opened in 1996 with the capacity to hold 30 million works and house the stock of the books, printed documents, periodicals, and the sound library of the old Richelieu National Library. Additionally, each departmental authority runs a lending library of which there are 21,000 in all. Of these, 17,000 are permanently located while the rest are mobile (the so-called "bibliobus"). Thus, besides being valuable research tools, the myriad libraries in France preserve and promote the rich French literary tradition.

Like most countries, France celebrates its culture each year with various festivities. Notably, the Fête de la Musique, first held in 1982, has come to symbolise a new approach to festivities by fusing the divide between organized, official events and spontaneous cultural expression. Every year, on June 21st, the Fête de la Musique brings together tens of thousands of professional and amateur musicians in towns all over France. The event has proved so popular that the initiative is growing beyond France as nearly 80 other countries have adopted it. Still, more traditional music festivals are not loosing their appreciation. Summer festivals are held annually in Aix-en-Provence, Vaison-la-Romaine, Avignon, and Strasbourg, respectively featuring opera, choral music, theatre, and contemporary music. Variety and rock also have their day in the sun as the Printemps de Bourges has become a tradition and the Trans-Musicales in Rennes has introduced Etienne Daho, Niagara and Stéphan Eicher to the public.

Much to the delight of film buffs, the annual week-long Fête du cinema, first organised in 1985, gives people the opportunity to watch as many films as they please in one day for the price of a single ticket. The organizers of this unusual promotional exercise are working with embassies and the Alliances françaises to grow the Fête du cinema into an international festival. Perhaps it will one day join the ranks of already well established film festivals including the prestigious Cannes Festival, whose Palme d'Or is probably the most coveted award in the film industry. Recently there has also been a proliferation of smaller scale film events with the founding of the Avoriaz fantasy and science-fiction film festival, the Deauville Festival, which shows American films to reciprocate the French film festival in Sarasota, the Cognac festival of detective films, and the Biarritz short-film festival. These festivals also play an important role in developing regional tourism.

Literature too has its festivals. As of 1998, every October Lire en fête, the successor of Le Temps des livres, mounts a number of initiatives designed to communicate a passion for the written word to the largest possible number of people. Among them, the Salon du livre (book fair) established in 1981, presents the public with France's biggest bookshop: On 450 stands, 1,200 publishers display their complete collections ranging from literature to encyclopedias to art books to children’s stories. The event has been so successful in Paris that at least ten towns in the provinces are following suit. Today book fairs are held in Brive, Bordeaux, Nantes, Le Mans, Saint Etienne, Saint Malo, Lyon and Strasbourg. Finally, there is also a comic books festival at Angoulême.

Lastly, another more cultural promotion comes once each year when monuments open their doors to visitors, who stroll free of charge through some of the hidden treasures of the French heritage. Participants include the galleries of the Elysée Palace, the Institut de France, the Hôtel de Matignon, the Palais Bourbon, the Bibliothèque Nationale, and the Opéra-Bastille. Some two million people take advantage of this opportunity to get a look inside 8,300 or so public buildings. The idea has inspired a similar "Visit a French garden" campaign, which invites the public to discover this often overlooked aspect of French culture each spring.