Paris Pompidou Centre close to opening art gallery in Shanghai

The Pompidou Centre in Paris, which houses the world’s second largest collection of modern art, said Tuesday that it was close to signing a deal for a franchise gallery in Shanghai.

The gallery is expected to show around 20 exhibitions over a period of five years in a wing of the new West Bund Art Museum, which is currently under construction in the cultural district of Shanghai by British architect David Chipperfield.

The Paris gallery, which also has plans to open branches in South Korea and Belgium, has been in talks for more than a decade with Chinese authorities.

Last year it staged its first show in China called Masterpieces from the Centre Pompidou 1906- 77 featuring work by Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp and other big names at the Shanghai Exhibition Centre.

The gallery said it had signed a protocol with the publicly owned West Bund Group for a renewable five- year deal to stage exhibitions in the new museum from 2019.

The company has been turning part of the formerly industrial Xuhui district of the city into a 11- kilometer “cultural corridor” along the Huangpu River.

The Pompidou hailed the deal as “the most important long- term cultural exchange project” between France and China and said it would give “an important place to contemporary Chinese art” in the new gallery.

It said its new franchise would be called the Centre Pompidou Shanghai ( West Bund).