Paris’s Centre Pompidou has announced that it will shutter from 2025 to 2030 while its striking Richard Rogers/Renzo Piano–designed home undergoes a major renovation and expansion. The Art Newspaper reports that an architectural competition for the project opened today. Six submissions will be selected at year-end, with the winner announced in 2024. The institution will begin closing gradually in autumn 2024, finally shutting its doors in summer 2025. Work will begin early the following year, with completion and reopening anticipated in 2030. The French state is paying for the €262 million ($284 million) renovation; the Pompidou is still seeking €160 million in additional funding for cultural projects.
As part of the planned restoration, the museum will refresh its galleries and expand into the more than 200,000 square feet of space under the gallery piazza that was previously used for bus parking. This area will be used to house cinemas that can double as exhibition spaces. On the ground floor, a “new generation center” will arrive on one side, while the other, previously occupied by two galleries, will host a large restaurant. The institution’s Bibliothèque Publique d’Information, which occupies three floors, will remain in place, as will the Musée national d’art modern; that space, which spans two floors, will house the Brancusi workshop. As well, a 16,000-square-foot open-air terrace on the museum’s seventh floor will open to the public for the first time.
Pompidou will partner with the Grand Palais and the Louvre on various projects during the closure, which is partially coincident with the Pompidou’s fiftieth anniversary, in 2027. The collaboration with the Louvre entails the presentation of works from the Pompidou collection in the various departments of the museum. The first planned installation of these works will center works from the contemporary art museum’s Objets d’Art department.
The French museum is also planning a location in Jersey City, its first foray into North America. Originally planned for 2024, the satellite’s opening was recently pushed back to 2026 due to Covid-19 and contract issues, according to the Jersey Journal.
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