{"id":632796,"date":"2026-10-16T21:16:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T21:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/632796\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T21:16:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T21:16:10","slug":"sprawling-contemporary-art-centre-large-opens-on-island-near-paris-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/632796\/","title":{"rendered":"Sprawling contemporary art centre Large opens on island near Paris – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

The French capital’s newest contemporary art centre opens this Saturday (17 October) on the Ile S\u00e9guin, in Greater Paris’s western reaches. Dubbed simply Large (or \u201cle Large\u201d), it is the latest philanthropic venture from the Emerige real estate group, and takes centre-stage in the wider Pointe des Arts development. Instead of a private museum in the vein of the Cartier and Louis Vuitton foundations, Large is a non-profit, without a dedicated collection, emphatically focused on public access and on promoting the French art scene.<\/p>\n

The Pointe des Arts complex has been designed by the Spanish architecture firm, RCR Arquitectes, in collaboration with the Paris-based CALQ design agency. The three buildings combine Corten steel\u2014the kind that rusts on purpose\u2014with cladding scales of copper-coloured aluminum and glass. Together they house an eight-screen cinema, retail space, office space and Large.<\/p>\n

Located at the core of the development, Large is a wedge of a building six stories tall, comprising 2,500 sq m of exhibition space. Its director Paula Aisemberg says art will greet visitors from the moment they enter.<\/p>\n

The inaugural exhibition riffs on the island\u2019s automotive history as the site of car-maker Renault’s primary manufacturing plant for the better part of the 20th century. Entitled Imaginary Engine and curated by Cecilia Alemani, the show will put works from Renault’s own collection, the Fonds Renault pour l\u2019Art et la Culture in conversation with 17 new commissions from contemporary artists.<\/p>\n

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Exhibition view of Imaginary Engine at Large. In the foreground: Romuald Jandolo, Estafard (2026). In the background: Julio Le Parc, Peintures en frise (1971-74)<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Adagp, Paris, 2026. Photo: Aur\u00e9lien Mole<\/p>\n

Since the turn of the century the founding president of the Emerige Group Laurent Dumas has been working to foster connections with the national art scene, through commissions, acquisitions for his private collection and the annual R\u00e9v\u00e9lations Emerige prize, which he founded in 2014, for young, unrepresented artists under 35.<\/p>\n

Aisemberg emphasises that this focus on artists living and working in the country, regardless of their nationality, is what will set Large apart too: \u201cThe French art scene is particularly riveting. We want to support it, promote it and make it accessible to the wider public, be that the international art crowd that doesn’t necessarily know it that well, or the local public that doesn’t always have access to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u00eele S\u00e9guin sits between the Porte de Saint-Cloud and the Pont de S\u00e8vres, at the point where the Seine river exits central Paris to the south-west and, looping back on itself, flows towards the Bois de Boulogne and St Denis beyond. For the best part of the 20th century, from 1919 to 1992, the island was owned by Renault. From the moment that historic plant shuttered, the Hauts-de-Seine department trained its sights on transforming the island into a cultural destination. Several false starts ensued. The collector Fran\u00e7ois Pinault\u2019s plans for a museum were thwarted by red tape. The subsequent R4 art city project\u2014which Jean Nouvel was supposed to design\u2014was sold by its embattled backer, the Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier, before it could be built.<\/p>\n

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Installation view of Imaginary Engine at Large. In the foreground: Bertrand Lavier, R23-F1 (2026). At the back: Jean Tinguely, Requiem pour une feuille morte (1967). <\/p>\n

\u00a9 Adagp, Paris, 2026. Photo: Aur\u00e9lien Mole<\/p>\n

Dumas, by contrast, has brought his plans to fruition. Speaking to the Fondation du Coll\u00e8ge de France in 2018, two years into the Pointe des Arts project, he said that as a developer, the \u00eele S\u00e9guin was \u201ca dream becoming reality\u201d and one of his most beautiful challenges.<\/p>\n

He has long spoken of dreaming up and building the city of tomorrow, which, in this instance, is quite literally the plan. Boulogne-Billancourt mayor Pierre-Christophe Baguet has described the island\u2019s redevelopment the \u201cjewel in the crown\u201d of the Vall\u00e9e de la Culture initiative the Hauts-de-Seine department launched in 2008. As Baguet noted, the Pointe des Arts complements a string of local institutions, from Jean Dubuffet\u2019s 1988 Tour aux Figures on the \u00cele Saint-Germain just upstream from the \u00eele S\u00e9guin to the Cit\u00e9 de la C\u00e9ramique in S\u00e8vres, the Manufacture Nationale, the Mus\u00e9e des Ann\u00e9es 30, the Albert Kahn Museum and Gardens, and the Mus\u00e9e Belmondo in Boulogne-Billancourt. And it sets the scene for the forthcoming Mus\u00e9e du Grand Si\u00e8cle in the Caserne Sully, in Saint-Cloud.<\/p>\n

This departmental cultural strategy is part of the wider metropolitan Grand Paris plan for 2050. Combining urban renewal with significant infrastructure and transport investment, the idea is to make the suburbs of the capital more accessible and more attractive, thereby easing congestion on every level. One of the new metro stations of the forthcoming Grand Paris express network, scheduled to open in 2027, will be at Pont de S\u00e8vres, putting the island just minutes from La D\u00e9fense and half an hour from Orly airport. Other ideas about river and cable-car access are floating around in a way that chimes quite beautifully with Large’s name, as well as the very Modernist ideals of speed and mechanical beauty that suffuse its first exhibition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The French capital’s newest contemporary art centre opens this Saturday (17 October) on the Ile S\u00e9guin, in Greater…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":632797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,12603,111,139,69,47902,6943],"class_list":["post-632796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-museums-heritage","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-openings","tag-paris"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}