The Pompidou de Paris closes to be reborn in five years | International

Paris

Earlier this year, the show halls began to close in the underground of the Pompidou Center in Paris, in the center of the capital. On March 12, it was the turn for the National Museum of Modern Art in plants 4 and 5, the largest world Fund for Works of the last century with MoMa New York, as well as the great library of levels 1 to 3. and on September 22 the last temporal exhibition will be closed, after the largest ones that can still be seen in the last and spectacular floor 6 will be closed in June.

At that time, the current move of the nearly 150,000 works of the Fund (around 2,000 exposed to the public) to secret places of the city or its exhibition in other French and foreign museums will be accelerated. And in April, there will be some reform works that must be completed in 2030 and “metamorphosar” this emblematic building to continue in a cultural reference as since its inauguration in 1977.

Located in the neighborhood popularly known as Beaubourg and next to the cosmopolitan Le Marais, this building of metal structure of colors exposed conceived by the architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers needs a transformation after almost 50 years. The works will renew and remove all the asbestos from the facades, will install better anti -capital systems, improve accessibility for all types of people and convert the 125,000 square meters property in more efficient energy. An adaptation to make it more sustainable and, at the same time, useful for exchanges between visitors.

Metamorphosis in a new agora

Because of the 440 million euros budgeted for the intervention as a whole, 260 consist properly in the conditioning works but another 180 million are dedicated to the new cultural project that will reorganize the space so that it is fully among the challenges of the 21st century. It is what its president, Laurent Le Bon, has baptized as “Movimiment”, a French neologismo invented by the writer Francis Ponge to his projected opening back to the future. The objective is to make the exterior of the so -called Piazza, the Plaza de Tramseaders even more porous, and the interior at level 0 and 1 with new accesses also in its southern and north aspects and a greater luminosity. And with this level or turn it into an agora, as an open theatrical space with descendants towards its lower level. The goal is to serve new artistic practices and specific manifestations. The three plants of the library also recondition for other uses, while exhibition rooms will enjoy a new scenery and terrace at level 7 will open to the public.

All this-adjocated to the couple of Franco-Japanese designers Nicolas Moreau and Hiroko Kusunoki, together with the Mexican decoration study Frida Escobedo-is part of a Le Bon plan to the search for private financing because the State only pays the technical works. Its size will go more or less depending on those 180 million euros. And it goes through the capture of patron for concrete spaces, the loan during these five years of the museum of the museum all over the world and the canon that pay other Pompidou Center, such as those of Malaga or Shanghai and, even, the contribution of countries such as Saudi Arabia (fifty million). Something that has caused a stir, but that the president of the institution defends.

“It is not a new Pompidou Center, which we would create in the middle of the desert, as has been said expedively,” said Le Bon in the newspaper Le Figaro; Last year after signing a principle of agreement with Riyadh. “There are museum conservatives who worry about this type of association, but no one is obliged to subscribe our cultural approach policy,” assumed the president of the Parisian center admitting that it is the first time that it is done in France outside the recent restoration of the Notre-Dame Cathedral, which also had foreign contributions.

“There are those who want to caricaturize the Pompidou Center as a brand, but above all we defend a spirit, either in Beaubourg or not,” Le Bon continued to specify. “The iconic building, which is still our reference, is only part of our activity. The National Museum of Modern Art is the largest provider in the world from 5,000 to 6,000 works and, in a good year, up to 10,000.”

Constellation of exhibitions around the world

On the other hand, Le Bon had to face for a hundred days, between October 2023 and January 2024, to an intermittent strike that came to have closed the 24 full days, with a loss of two million euros. The workers claimed to have the salary assured and their continuity once the works were finished. Finally, an agreement was reached.

Simultaneously, Le Bon launched the so -called constellation that, precisely, consists of collaborations with other museum establishments to organize exhibitions of his works during this time, and in which Pompidou teams will also participate. In April, some of these exhibitions throughout France were opened and, in June, the Grand Palais Parisino will host great samples of Nikki by Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely and Pontus Hultén or an important collection of Art Brut. The Pompidou de Metz Center, in the Great Este – first example of decentralization of the institution in 2006 (in 2026 another opens in Massy, ​​south of Paris) – will receive for example The André Breton workshop wall;, a structure of 400 objects of the ideologist of surrealism, including a picture of Joan Miró but also bones of whales, mummified cicadas or dissected sea urchins, which requires a huge logistics with 50 boxes adapted for each type of object. As is equally complex, the transfer of others from Pompidou, some created in the same museum, by Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Broodthaers or Anselm Kiefer.

It is also in the case of Composition with two parrots; that Fernand Léger made between 1935 and 1939, whose size is 4×4.8 meters and that he will travel to the Pompidou Center in Malaga where there are no forklift and will have to enter directly from the outside. Malaga will also be the scene of the itinerant exhibition of Simon Hantaï. While in the CaixaForum of Madrid and Barcelona it will arrive between this year and what is an exhibition on Henri Matisse and in the nine Spanish CaixaForum another about optical art between 2027 and 2029. As Le Bon said in the interview in Le Figaro: “My goal is to spread our collection, not keep it in a bunker.”