FONDATION CARTIER REVEALS PLANS FOR NEW PARIS OUTPOST

Paris’s Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, which is celebrating its fortieth anniversary this year, has unveiled plans for its new home across from the Louvre. Set to welcome visitors in 2025, the classic Haussmannian building on place du Palais-Royal is being renovated by Pritzker Prize–winning French architect Jean Nouvel, who designed the foundation’s current home, a sleek glass-and-steel structure on boulevard Raspail, in 1994. That building was noted for its open, airy interior and lack of interior partition walls, allowing for the easy positioning of exhibitions.

Constructed as part of Napoleon III’s urban redevelopment initiative, the Fondation Cartier’s elegant new digs began life in 1855 as a five-star hotel before being transformed into a department store in 1863 and the Louvre des Antiquaires, home to antique shops and galleries, in 1978. “A site such as this one calls for boldness, courage that artists might not necessarily demonstrate in other institutional spaces,” said Nouvel in a statement. “The Fondation Cartier will likely be the institution offering the greatest differentiation of its spaces, the most diverse exhibition forms and viewpoints. Here, it is possible to do what cannot be done elsewhere, by shifting the system of the act of showing.”

Nouvel’s plans for the building’s exterior include massive bay windows, while the interior will feature flexible halls and mobile platforms allowing the 91,500-square-foot space to be adapted as necessary. The floor plan allows for layered vertical spaces up to thirty-six feet high and incorporates towering open arches and a series of walkways from which visitors can view the various spaces.

The Fondation Cartier was established in Jouy-en-Josas, France, in 1984, and moved to Paris a decade later. It holds roughly 4,000 works in its collection and has recently hosted exhibitions by artists including Claudia Andujar, Matthew Barney, Malick Sidibé, and Sarah Sze.