{"id":255346,"date":"2025-11-01T21:22:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T21:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/255346\/"},"modified":"2025-11-01T21:22:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T21:22:08","slug":"inside-fondation-cartiers-new-home-in-paris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/255346\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Fondation Cartier\u2019s New Home in Paris"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen the Fondation Cartier pour l\u2019art contemporain<\/a> decided it had outgrown its Jean Nouvel<\/a>\u2013designed glass structure on Paris\u2019s Left Bank, its hunt for new real estate led to apt quarters for a museum<\/a> born from a luxury-goods empire: a former shopping mall.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShopping mall,\u201d however, doesn\u2019t quite do justice to the grand Haussmannian edifice\u2014complete with a pale-yellow limestone facade, gracefully arched porticoes, ample wrought iron, and a classic zinc roof\u2014on the Right Bank\u2019s Place du Palais-Royal, where the institution opened on October 25.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo convert it into a 21st-century temple of art<\/a> and design, the foundation again turned to Nouvel, the Pritzker Prize\u2013winning French architect whose recent imaginative projects include the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the National Museum of Qatar. \u201cJean Nouvel is our architect since 40 years,\u201d says Chris Dercon, managing director of the foundation. \u201cHe\u2019s part of the family of the Fondation Cartier. It\u2019s ideal to continue to work with an architect and to follow his or her development.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Malick<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tMalick Sidib\u00e9, Combat des amis avec pierres, 1976, gelatin silver print, printed 2005.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Galerie Magnin-A, Paris<\/p>\n

\n\tFrom Nouvel\u2019s point of view, \u201cThat trust allows me to propose bold, unconventional ideas.\u201d For the museum\u2019s previous, apparition-like building, completed in 1994, he tells Robb Report, \u201cI chose radical transparency. At Place du Palais-Royal, that approach could not be repeated\u2014the heritage of the site called for a different architectural language. The idea of transparency remains essential, but the disruption has shifted inward, taking the form of a flexible architecture, open to the unexpected. Rather than designing a fixed model, I wanted to create a living instrument, one that can adapt to continuously evolving projects.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHis solution: a vast, hollowed-out hall with nearly 70,000 square feet of exhibition space\u2014more than five times that of its former home\u2014equipped with a system of five elevator-like platforms that promise a seemingly limitless number of configurations, vertically and horizontally. The concept of mobility enables \u201cus to offer artists and curators the possibility to create their own Jean Nouvel building every six months,\u201d says Dercon. \u201cThink about it like Lego.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Fondation<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tA view of the new museum\u2019s interiors.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMartin Argyroglo<\/p>\n

\n\tThe title of the inaugural exhibition, Exposition G\u00e9n\u00e9rale<\/a>, winks at shows of the same name that once filled French malls like this one with a hodgepodge of fashion, textiles, kitchenware, and art. With 500 works by 100 artists, it follows themes of design, nature, craft, and artistic interchange. Among the highlights: Malick Sidib\u00e9\u2019s postcolonial photographs of Mali, a densely composed Sarah Sze installation, a Bernie Krause nature soundscape, and a joyfully vibrant salon de eventos, or reception hall, created in situ by Freddy Mamani, a leader of Neo-Andean architecture. \u201cIt\u2019s very colorful. It\u2019s very Baroque,\u201d Dercon says of the latter. \u201cThink of a 21st-century version of a Baroque mestizo church in the Andes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe foundation holds roughly 4,500 works in its collection, amassed over the 41 years since its inception. Most, he says, are by artists who \u201cwork in the margins\u201d and don\u2019t regularly appear at auction or mega galleries. \u201cOur interests are very different from the encyclopedic [mission] of the Louvre, very different from the Mus\u00e9e des Arts d\u00e9coratifs,\u201d he notes. \u201cI always say that we are interested in in-betweenness\u2014in between the disciplines. We have always invited artists and curators and theoreticians to think in between the genres and also to work with one another.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Fondation<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tArchitect Jean Nouvel created a system of mobile platforms in an effort to give artists and curators maximum flexibility.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMartin Argyroglo<\/p>\n

\n\tFondation Cartier has its own role to play in that last regard, as it joins a neighborhood already chockablock with museums and other landmarks. \u201cIt\u2019s going to create an interesting dialogue with the Louvre, which is just in front of me, and it\u2019s going to also create a very interesting dialogue with other buildings, like Tadao Ando\u2019s Bourse de Commerce\u201d\u2014home of the Pinault Collection\u2014\u201cwhich is only four minutes away, and further down the road with the Tuileries, H\u00f4tel de la Marine, Jeu de Paume,\u201d Dercon says. \u201cWhat we really want to avoid is this becoming a \u2018museum mile.\u2019 Our building is part of a mixed-use compound because above us are still offices. It\u2019s good not to create a museum mile, not to have something which at night is going to feel like a mausoleum.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTop: The Fondation Cartier pour l\u2019art contemporain\u2019s new home is inside the former Louvre des Antiquaires, a stone\u2019s throw from the Louvre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the Fondation Cartier pour l\u2019art contemporain decided it had outgrown its Jean Nouvel\u2013designed glass structure on Paris\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[9930,76,354,355,49,48,356,75,4419,22150],"class_list":{"0":"post-255346","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-ca","13":"tag-canada","14":"tag-design","15":"tag-entertainment","16":"tag-magazine","17":"tag-museum"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}