Paris Dispatch: Francois Pinault’s Contemporary Art Museum Opens – Finally!
“The luxury magnate’s Bourse de Commerce Museum was worth waiting for.”
As if to tell us the cobblestone streets and tree-lined boulevards of Paris are beckoning, long-time journalist and cultural maven Shellie Karabell, with whom I have enjoyed a more than 20-year friendship, pens her take-away from her immersion in the opening of Francois Pinault’s Bourse de Commerce Museum. An experience she promises is “worth waiting for.” For those with a visit to Paris on your “to do” list, the chance to experience an architectural rebirth and visual feast awaits.
Francois Pinault’s Contemporary Art Museum Opens – Finally!
It is the culmination of a dream for Paris’s answer to Lorenzo DeMedici: sharing his vast collection of contemporary art with art lovers in Paris. “Paris,” writes Francois Pinault, art connoisseur and founder of luxury group Kering, “is the city I love. .. Paris is not only the city of passion, first and foremost, it is the natural home of artists, of their creative genius and their beliefs.”
Today, Pinault’s ever-expanding collection of contemporary art (10,000 pieces and counting) includes paintings, sculptures, videos, photographs, sound installations and performances by Charles Ray, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons and Marlene Dumas.
Hands-On Selection
Echoing Kering’s corporate slogan, “empowering imagination,” Pinault himself chose the 30 artists and pieces for the inaugural “Ouvertures” exhibition (many of which have not been seen before), including Bertrand Lavier, David Hammons, Rudolf Stingel, Miriam Cahn, Tarek Aroui, and Thomas Schutte.
In pride of place in the building’s massive 30-foot high rotunda, is a gigantic 13-foot tall wax replica of the 16th-century Abduction of the Sabine Women by the Flemish sculptor Giambologna (also known as Jean de Bologne). Created by Swiss sculptor Urs Fischer, the work was set alight during the opening of the museum during the weekend of May 22, and will burn like a huge 2-story candle for the six months’ duration of the opening exhibition. The effect itself is art, a commentary on the fragility of the material world; on vanity and the passage of time.
A Dream Unthwarted
Pinault’s dream dates back to 2004, and his original plans to build a $195-million private museum on the Île Seguin in Paris, designed by Pritzker-Prize-winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando. Red tape, neighborhood objections and a lack of political will quashed that dream.
Undaunted, Pinault purchased the Palazzo Grassi in Venice from the Fiat Group for $37-million, put Tadao to work, and moved his collection to the Grand Canal in 2006. Three years later, the Grand Canal found itself home to a second Pinault museum, the restored customs house, Punta della Dogana, outbidding the Guggenheim Collection for the 33-year rights to the building.
Four Centuries of History
The Bourse de Commerce, the only significant structure remaining from Paris’s ancient food distribution Les Halles, is a monument to four centuries of French history: this was the site of Catherine de Medici’s 16th century palace, Hotel de Soissons, boasting the city’s first free-standing column. The palace was torn down in the 18th century but the pillar remains as part of the museum.
As Paris grew as a commercial center, the building also evolved from its 18th-century origins as a circular corn exchange with an open-air interior court. An iron and glass dome (inspired by the Pantheon in Rome, featuring murals representing French trade across the continents) was added in 1811, and in 1888–89, much of the building’s structure was replaced, retaining the layout and the dome. The dome is listed as an historical monument. This classification subjected the building’s $195-million renovation to very strict rules from France’s heritage authorities: the building is only leased (for 50 years), not purchased, at a cost of $18-millon upfront, $75,000 annually, and a share of the ticket sales. At the end of the lease, the building must be returned to the state minus the renovation.
In the meantime, visitors can avail themselves of architect Tadao Ando’s welcoming and subtle design, blending history with contemporary art. The spatial layout of concentric circles features 10 galleries over 75,000 square feet of exhibition space, including a studio dedicated to video and audio works and an auditorium for conferences, meetings, screenings, concerts, and events. A restaurant headed by Michelin-starred chef Michel Bras occupies an upper level and is open to the public until midnight thanks to a separate after-hours entrance.
Upping the Ante
The Pinault Collection sets a new marker in the sand for museums in Paris and it ups the ante in the “art wars” between France’s two luxury titans, Francois Pinault and LVMH’s Bernard Arnault, whose Frank Gehry-designed Fondation Louis Vuitton opened in the Bois de Boulogne in October of 2014 this property also reverts to the city in 50 years). Both men began collecting in the 1980’s – Arnault with a Monet, Pinault with a Mondrian. Both have been locked in business competition for more than two decades. But if private passions have now become another stage for competition, on which businesses will strive to outdo themselves serving the public good…well, can that be a bad thing?
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Acknowledgement:
Post by Shellie Karabell, Journalist
Photo Credits:
1. Curved wall with pictures: Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine. exhibition views of Ouverture, Bourse de Commerce -Pinault Collection, Paris, 2021. Photo: Aurelien Mole.
2.Goat head: David Hammons,exhibition views of Ouverture, Bourse de Commerce -Pinault Collection, Paris, 2021. Photo: Aurelien Mole.
3. Rotunda: Rotunda/installation: Urs Fischr. Photo: Cathy Nolan, Anglo-American Press Association.
4. Dome: Dome. Photo: Aurelien Mole.Visuals are complements of the Press Department in connection with Bourse de Commerce - The Pinault Collection