The Fondation Cartier pour l’artwork contemporain, one in all Europe’s most high-profile non-public sector cultural organisations, will lay naked its huge assortment on the opening of its extremely anticipated new Paris gallery later this month. Over 600 works by greater than 100 artists will go on present within the inaugural exhibition on the new house situated on the Place du Palais-Royal, reverse the Louvre.
The brand new constructing, a part of the previous Louvre des Antiquaires advanced, has been reconfigured by the French architect Jean Nouvel, boosting the capital’s burgeoning up to date artwork scene. The gallery’s launch exhibition, Exposition Générale (25 October-23 August 2026), is designed by the Italian studio Formafantasma.
Chris Dercon, the managing director of Fondation Cartier, says: “I believe if there’s one attribute about this primary exhibition in relationship to the constructing, it’s that we laid open the gathering. Now we [draw upon] 40 years of amassing, and meaning there’s large curiosity in our set of works. After all, we had to select. We will solely present 600 works from a group of round 4,500.”
View from Degree-1. Andrea Branzi, Gazebo
Cyril Marcilhacy
The exhibition’s title, Exposition Générale, refers back to the historical past of the situation and the constructing. Initially created because the Grand Lodge du Louvre to accommodate guests to Exposition Universelle of 1889—a world’s truthful identified in English because the Paris Exposition—the venue later grew to become the Grands Magasins du Louvre (1880-1977), with the resort salons transformed into business exhibition areas. This business side continued with the Louvre des Antiquaires (1977-2018).
Exposition Générale consists of key works by artists as Sarah Sze, Rinko Kawauchi, Patti Smith, James Turrell and Vija Celmins. In line with a a challenge assertion, these items are unfold throughout 4 thematic sections that “reinterpret the encyclopaedic museum mannequin”. The sections are Machines d’structure, described as “an ephemeral architectural laboratory”; Être nature, which “brings the forest into the constructing”; Making Issues, “an area for experimentation with supplies and methods” and un monde réel, which explores technological and dystopian visions.
The Making Issues part additionally consists of works by artists resembling Joan Mitchell (Grande Vallée VI, 1984) and Damien Hirst (Fantastic World Blossom, 2018). “I simply had a dialogue in regards to the place of the Mitchell and Hirst works,” says Dercon.
“They’re virtually in an intimate state of affairs as a result of they’re behind Olga de Amaral’s work and in entrance of a designed panorama by Andrea Branzi (Gazebo, 2008). There are these sudden dialogues.”
EXIT, an immersive set up created in 2008 by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, primarily based on an unique concept by the thinker Paul Virilio, makes use of knowledge collected by scientists to map various kinds of migratory flows. The work is included within the part, un monde reel. “Within the case of the Diller work, we needed to replace the piece as a result of it is a work in regards to the political state of affairs which when it comes to immigration and the information has modified enormously at present,” Dercon says.
Sooner or later, the the Place du Palais-Royal house will host two important exhibitions yearly, primarily based on a transdisciplinary method. Dercon explains: “We’ll search for artists which aren’t well-known right here who need to be proven. It’ll be very completely different from different foundations due to the character of our exhibitions, our identification, our assortment.”
Works by Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, Fabrice Hyber and Raymond Depardon
Marc Domage
The director provides that exhibitions may have a world focus, usually exploring Africa and Latin America. Subsequent autumn, the Fondation Cartier will current The Harvest, the primary main exhibition in France devoted to the Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama.
The brand new Fondation Cartier venue covers 8,500 sq. m accessible to the general public, with 6,500 sq. m of exhibition house, housing a library, auditorium and a restaurant. The brand new constructing encompasses 5 “cell platforms” which will be modified and moved.
Dercon says: “We will select the constellation of the platforms—we will select [the arrangement] with the artist, with the curators; we will select this additionally relying on the theme or character of an exhibition, and whether or not it’s a group exhibition or a monographic present.
“These new forms of artwork areas are practical and really precious. Particularly when you consider a group just like the Fondation Cartier’s which is a group of in betweenness—in between artwork and design, in between design and structure, in between arts and crafts.
“That type of in betweenness, you possibly can resolve it in two methods. You possibly can create a separate wing for the design part or a separate wing for the structure, after which you might have some crafts in one other wing. However on this constructing, all these disciplines, they discuss to one another.”
Exterior areas are simply as essential as inside areas; an underground passage that when linked the Métro to the Grands Magasins— often called Galerie Valois—will as an illustration host shows linked to the principle exhibitions on the Place du Palais-Royal. “Jean’s [Nouvel’s] idea can also be in regards to the outdoors and the context of the situation and the historic space,” Dercon says.
The price of remodeling the historic web site is undisclosed. “The price is ridiculous—and confidential,” Alain Dominque Perrin, the president of the Fondation Cartier, advised The Artwork Newspaper in 2024. Normal admission prices €15 with free admission for guests underneath 18, guests on revenue help, disabled guests and asylum seekers, amongst others.
The Fondation Cartier opened in Jouy-en-Josas within the Île-de-France area in October 1984, then headed by Marie-Claude Beaud with Perrin as president. Jean Nouvel additionally designed the Fondation Cartier’s former house, the glass and metal constructing on the Boulevard Raspail in Montparnasse, Paris, which opened in 1994.
Different non-public patrons have adopted Cartier’s lead and lately, Paris has change into a mecca for personal artwork foundations. Bernard Arnault, the proprietor of the LVMH luxurious items conglomerate and the founding father of the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, opened his up to date artwork museum within the Bois de Boulogne in 2014.
