The opening of the brand new Fondation Cartier Pour l’Artwork Contemporain is without doubt one of the most anticipated occasions occurring concurrently with Artwork Basel Paris. Persevering with the legacy of its Rive Gauche venue—initially designed in 1991 by a then-rising Jean Nouvel—the establishment has once more turned to the now internationally acclaimed architect, and Nouvel has fully reimagined a Haussmannian constructing within the coronary heart of Paris. The area, on Place du Palais-Royal, was previously dwelling to the Grands Magasins du Louvre.
Fondation Cartier will unveil its new premises in the course of the artwork honest’s opening weekend with its inaugural present, “Exposition Générale,” which brings collectively main works from the muse’s assortment inside a very new, fluid show and exhibition structure conceived to rethink and redefine what a museum must be as we speak. Forward of the debut, Observer spoke with Béatrice Grenier, director of curatorial affairs at Fondation Cartier, to be taught extra in regards to the new area and the way it displays the establishment’s evolving course.
In Grenier’s phrases, that is “not only a transfer—it’s actually a metamorphosis of the establishment.” Fondation Cartier will inhabit not solely a brand new architectural area but in addition a completely totally different historic context. “The distinction between the 2 websites is putting.”
Within the early Nineteen Nineties, Nouvel was solely simply beginning to acquire worldwide recognition. He had not too long ago accomplished the Institut du Monde Arabe and was already recognized for his revolutionary architectural imaginative and prescient. “With the brand new location on Place du Palais-Royal, Nouvel brings the total scope of his world profession to the undertaking,” Grenier tells Observer, noting that after designing museums from the Louvre Abu Dhabi to the KKL Luzern in Switzerland and the Pudong Artwork Museum in Shanghai, he’s “not solely a globally famend architect, however one whose profession has been deeply related to museums and the dialogue between structure and exhibition-making.” In 2005, throughout his exhibition on the Louisiana Museum, Nouvel introduced what turned a well-known manifesto, arguing that the museum is a vital area for architectural experimentation. “In some ways, this new Fondation Cartier undertaking might be seen because the end result of that lifelong inquiry—his ongoing query: ‘Which structure for which museum?’”
There was “an ongoing dialog with Jean Nouvel that spanned at the least 5 years. He had lengthy been conversant in the Fondation Cartier’s program and assortment—he noticed each single present on the Fondation—so he was deeply invested in rethinking what a brand new structure for exhibition-making may very well be,” Grenier recollects. “He proposed this concept of a dynamic structure for the museum, envisioning it as the way forward for cultural infrastructure.”
On this undertaking for the brand new Fondation Cartier, the central problem was twofold: first, how one can modernize the historic Haussmannian constructing whereas respecting its Nineteenth-century context; and second, how one can invent a brand new structure for exhibition-making. Nouvel approached these challenges as interconnected, Grenier explains. “On one hand, he sought to protect and foreground the cultural and historic spirit of the constructing, initially constructed in 1855. Alternatively, he developed a completely new idea for museography.”
Nouvel preserved the historic shell of the constructing—the façade, protected as a part of Rue de Rivoli, a road initially designed by Percier and Fontaine, the identical architects behind the Grande Galerie on the Louvre. He added tall bay home windows that enable passersby to see into and out of the museum, making a porous area that fosters steady dialogue between inside and exterior, marked by the transparency attribute of his work.
If the thought of a “museum in flux” has grow to be more and more widespread amongst artwork world professionals, Nouvel has translated it into an architectural construction, designing 5 platforms starting from 200 to 340 sq. meters that may be adjusted to totally different heights. “This implies all the ground plan of the museum can shift and adapt, permitting every main present to be introduced inside a newly imagined architectural area,” Grenier explains.
Conceptually, Nouvel fully departs from conventional museographic ideas. Whereas museums are usually designed as a sequence of galleries forming a linear narrative, right here that logic is overturned. “Every little thing that got here earlier than—Le Corbusier’s ‘museum of infinite progress,’ the white dice mannequin, even the 18th-century palaces that turned museums—has collapsed. At Fondation Cartier, we’re coming into an period the place artwork historical past is expressed via volumes, not simply via chronological evolution. It’s a really thrilling shift.”
This fluid area permits a extremely multimedia and transdisciplinary method, breaking down obstacles between practices and fields of thought, as Fondation Cartier has executed since its creation in 1984 by Alain Dominique Perrin, then president of Maison Cartier. “By way of programming, the constructing itself nearly serves as a immediate—it encourages us to assume additional about dialogue. Not simply conversations between artists, but in addition between totally different media and with historical past itself,” Grenier notes.
The construction conceived by Nouvel, in accordance with Grenier, might be seen as an evolution of Lina Bo Bardi’s pioneering “open ground” design for MASP in São Paulo, which launched an idiosyncratic and plurispective method to artwork historical past and museography. Nouvel had additionally explored this together with his undertaking for the Louvre Abu Dhabi, which deliberately disrupts chronology and hierarchy to create a transcultural journey via human civilization. But, as Grenier factors out, Bo Bardi’s undertaking “remained considerably two-dimensional.” The Fondation Cartier goals to be extra radical: “It’s not solely about how artwork is proven however how the very construction compels dialogue between time durations, disciplines and methods of seeing.”
“The thought is to open the constructing, and thru it, open up artwork historical past: to attach extra deeply with the latest historical past of modernity, but in addition to broaden the normal encyclopedia of artwork—the one symbolized most clearly proper throughout the road on the Louvre,” Grenier continues. “We wish to embrace a better range of media, of voices, of exhibition methodologies. Variety, in each sense, is the perfect.”
The inaugural exhibition “Exposition Générale,” curated by Grenier, will check these prospects. That includes almost 600 works by a couple of hundred artists and creatives together with Claudia Andujar, James Turrell, Sarah Sze, Olga de Amaral, Junya Ishigami, Solange Pessoa, David Lynch, Annette Messager, Cai Guo-Qiang, Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Chéri, amongst others—the present traces 40 years of artwork via the Fondation Cartier’s assortment. Right this moment the gathering consists of greater than 4,500 works by 500 artists from roughly sixty nationalities throughout a variety of media, reflecting the muse’s long-standing dedication to supporting modern creation throughout disciplines—visible arts, design, pictures, movie, efficiency and science—typically blurring the boundaries between them.
The exhibition design is by the acclaimed Italian duo Formafantasma, recognized for his or her experimental, research-driven method that challenges conventional hierarchies between objects, viewers and environments, remodeling exhibition design right into a type of storytelling and reflection on techniques of worth and which means.
The mix of Nouvel’s structure and Formafantasma’s design permits for 360-degree visibility all through the exhibition. The important thing query, Grenier says, was sensible: how might this idea of dynamic structure work in actuality? “We requested them to design one thing that may very well be modular but in addition aesthetically related to the historical past of the constructing,” she explains. “It was a division retailer for 150 years, which is fascinating, as a result of Parisian shops traditionally borrowed from the visible language of the Common Expositions—putting know-how, vogue, textiles and home items all on the identical degree.”
The objective was to recreate that very same sense of density and visible cohabitation between totally different artists and media. Formafantasma responded by designing modular constructions—partitions, pillars, textile wraparounds—that reference the constructing’s previous whereas introducing a brand new vocabulary of show. “In some areas, you’ll be able to sense a sort of Scarpa-like heat and domesticity; in others, a extra industrial rhythm,” Grenier says. “The exhibition itself turns into self-aware, performing a mirrored image by itself modes of show.” Finally, she emphasizes, “the best way artwork is proven—the relationships established between the works and with area via their presentation—is without doubt one of the central arguments of any exhibition.”
Wanting forward, Grenier believes this area—just like the Fondation’s earlier dwelling—will problem artists to work in more and more site-specific methods. Delicate modifications in top, gentle, or proportion can radically shift which means and notion. Because the late Nineteen Sixties and Seventies—the “second of realization” when all the things turned considerably site-specific—artists have been deeply invested in presentation. “Right this moment, all of the boundaries between features are extra blurred, disciplines overlap and artists typically transfer into curatorial territory, and curators assume like artists,” she displays. “So this transdisciplinary situation is strictly what the constructing each provokes and responds to. It’s very a lot a mirrored image of the modern second.”
Grenier sees the brand new constructing as a turning level for Fondation Cartier—an establishment that has reached maturity via many years of partnerships with establishments worldwide and lengthy relationships with the artists it has supported. “The structure Jean Nouvel has designed responds on to a program that has all the time been worldwide and cross-disciplinary—however that now guarantees to increase even additional into what I’d name a sort of planetary tradition,” she says.
Now immediately throughout from the Louvre, Fondation Cartier occupies a symbolic place the place trendy and modern experimentation meet. Right here, layers of historical past, structure and tradition intertwine to open artwork historical past to new transdisciplinary dialogues. It’s, Grenier concludes, “a spot for artists from everywhere in the world, working throughout disciplines—not solely in modern artwork as outlined by the market or the festivals, but in addition in structure, cinema, transmedia, science and anthropology. Collectively, these fields are partaking with essentially the most pressing problems with our time. In that sense, this new constructing on the coronary heart of Paris is actually an area constructed for the urgency of tradition as we speak.”
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