Paris center seals Shanghai franchise art gallery deal
The Pompidou Centre in Paris, which houses the world’s second biggest collection of modern art, sealed a deal to open a franchise gallery in Shanghai, French President Emmanuel Macron said.
Macron made the announcement after holding talks with President Xi Jinping during his first state visit to China, AFP reported.
He did not give more details but the Pompidou Centre had announced plans for the gallery last July.
It will show around 20 exhibitions over five years in a wing of the new West Bund Art Museum, which is being built in Shanghai’s cultural district by British architect David Chipperfield.
The Paris gallery, which also has plans to open branches in South Korea and Belgium, has been in talks with the Chinese authorities for more than a decade.
In 2016, 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 has 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 (seven-mile) “cultural corridor” along the Huangpu River.
The Pompidou said it would give an important place to contemporary Chinese art in the new gallery. The new franchise will be called the Centre Pompidou Shanghai (West Bund).
The West Bund Museum is due to be completed at the end of 2018. It will be a major boost to the area’s attractions which already include the private Long Museum West Bund, the Yuz Museum and the Shanghai Centre of Photography.
The Pompidou Centre – which also houses a library and cinemas – was an architectural sensation when it first opened in Paris in 1977.
Its collection of more than 120,000 artworks is regarded as the second most important in the world after the Museum of Modern Art in New York.