New museum hosting Francois Pinault’s collection boosts Paris claim to be modern art capital

One of the world’s biggest art collectors unveiled Monday his plans for a spectacular new museum in Paris, cementing the city’s claim to be a modern art capital.

French billionaire Francois Pinault will show his $ 1.4 billion collection of modern masters in the domed Bourse de Commerce, within a stone’s throw of the Louvre, long the world’s most visited museum.

The new gallery, which he said would open in early 2019, is also within sight of the Pompidou Centre, which houses Europe’s largest modern art collection.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo called the museum “an immense gift” to the French capital and told reporters that it would help put the city back at the top of the modern art tree.

Pinault, 80, holds an enormous trove of abstract and contemporary masterpieces in a 3,500- piece collection that goes from Mark Rothko to Damien Hirst.

He owns the auction house Christie’s and built a fashion empire that contains labels like Gucci, Saint Laurent and Balenciaga, and already has his own private museum in Venice.

But he has been trying for decades to find a home for his collection in Paris.

That desire sharpened when his great business rival Bernard Arnault, who controls the LVMH luxury goods conglomerate, opened the Frank Gehry- designed Louis Vuitton Foundation for his art collection in 2014.

Pinault has commissioned another Pritzker- winning architect, the Japanese master Tadao Ando, to convert the magnificent 19th- century Bourse de Commerce, which sits on the edge of Paris’s former central market district.