Art Enters the Paris Stock Exchange
François Pinault’s art collection finds a new home in the Tadao Ando-overhauled Bourse de Commerce
After a 20-year wait, French billionaire tycoon François Pinault’s dream of sharing his contemporary art collection — among the most important in the world — with a Parisian audience has finally come true with the opening of his new private art museum in the heart of the French capital. In the early 2000s, the owner of Kering and Christie’s had attempted to build a gallery to exhibit his collection in the outskirts of Paris on an island in the Seine where a Renault car factory once stood, but failed, prompting him to turn his attention to Venice. The inauguration of the Bourse de Commerce — Pinault Collection now completes the blue-chip collector’s trilogy of art spaces, which had started 15 years ago with Palazzo Grassi, followed by Punta della Dogana. Amassed over a period of more than 40 years, his collection includes over 10,000 paintings, sculptures, videos, photographs, sound pieces, installations and performances from the 1960s to present-day by almost 380 international modern and contemporary artists such as Piet Mondrian, Louise Bourgeois, Agnes Martin, Cy Twombly, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman and Albert Oehlen. Pinault states, “Not only will it add to the European landscape of institutions devoted to presenting contemporary art, but after the difficult year experienced by France and the world in 2020, it will contribute to the renaissance of the Parisian cultural sphere.”
A circular, glass-and-iron domed monument originally serving as a corn market in the 18th century and transformed in 1889 to become a stock exchange, the new museum contains 6,800 sqm of cultural programming space, three floors of exhibition galleries, a 284-seat auditorium, a black box theatre, reception and mediation rooms and Michel and Sébastien’s Bras’ La Halle aux Grains restaurant. The architecture is a dialogue between heritage and contemporary creation. Pierre-Antoine Gatier, chief architect of French historic sites and project manager, says, “The Bourse de Commerce is a manifesto for Parisian architecture of the 16th, 18th and 19th centuries. In the various historical strata it displays, the building stands as an iconoclastic work.” There will be a permanent programme and temporary thematic and solo shows, commissions, cartes blanches and in-situ projects. Entitled Opening, the first season of exhibitions and events, which remained a surprise for visitors until the launch, features approximately 35 artists and over 170 works, resonating with one another and tackling questions of identity, territory and culture. Presented throughout the entire building, some artistic proposals will last only one evening, others several months.
Debuting in 2017, the renovation was entrusted to Tadao Ando — Pinault’s go-to architect — along with Paris-based NeM agency. The Bourse de Commerce is the Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect’s fourth project for Pinault, after the three Venetian cultural buildings, and is his largest undertaking in France so far. “Tadao Ando conceived a radical project, while closely following the building’s architectural and historical markers,” Pinault notes. “Once again, he has shown his capacity to reconcile a respect for tradition and the demands of modernity.” While paying homage to the edifice’s four centuries of history, Ando transformed the interiors into a space for contemporary art, constructing a circle within a circle. In the monumental rotunda within the heritage listed