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The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of Richard Rogers, Su Rogers and Renzo Piano, along with Gianfranco Franchini. It is named after Georges Pompidou, the President of France from 1969 to 1974 who commissioned the building, and was officially opened on 31 January 1977 by President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.
Centre Pompidou is located in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris. It houses the italic=no (BPI; Public Information Library), a vast public library; the italic=no, the largest museum for modern art in Europe; and IRCAM, a centre for music and acoustic research. The Place Georges Pompidou is an open plaza in front of the museum.
The Centre Pompidou will be closed for renovation from 1 July 2025 until 2030. The BPI will be temporarily relocated to its Lumière building.
In 1969, Georges Pompidou, the new president, adopted the Beaubourg project and decided it to be the location of both the new library and a centre for the contemporary arts. In the process of developing the project, the IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) was also housed in the complex.
While the renovation is underway, Centre Pompidou will internationally expand, opening its first South American space in 2027. The new $240 million satellite is schedule to launch in November 2027 and will be located in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil. Centre Pompidou plans to continue its satellite expansion in other locations, such as Shanghai and Málaga.
Explaining the ideas that informed the Centre Pompidou's design, Piano said, "Our idea was a museum that would inspire curiosity, not intimidate people, and that would open up culture to all... Our credo was a place for all people – for the poor and rich, the young and old".
The daring design increased the efficiency of interior space utilization. Initially, all of the functional structural elements of the building were colour-coded: green pipes are plumbing, blue ducts are for climate control, electrical wires are encased in yellow, and circulation elements and devices for safety (e.g., fire extinguishers) are red. According to Piano, the design was meant to be "not a building but a town where you find everything – lunch, great art, a library, great music".
The Centre Pompidou, initially met with dismay akin to the Eiffel Tower's reception in its time, is now widely regarded as an artwork in its own merit. National Geographic described the reaction to the design as "love at second sight." An article in Le Figaro declared: "Paris has its own monster, just like the one in Loch Ness." But two decades later, while reporting on Rogers' winning the Pritzker Prize in 2007, The New York Times noted that the design of the Centre "turned the architecture world upside down" and that "Mr. Rogers earned a reputation as a high-tech iconoclast with the completion of the 1977 Pompidou Centre, with its exposed skeleton of brightly coloured tubes for mechanical systems". The Pritzker jury said the Pompidou "revolutionised museums, transforming what had once been elite monuments into popular places of social and cultural exchange, woven into the heart of the city."
In September 2020, it was announced that the Centre Pompidou would begin renovations in 2023, which will require either a partial closure for seven years or a full closure for three years. The projected cost for the upcoming renovations is $235 million. In January 2021 Roselyne Bachelot, France's culture minister, announced that the centre would close completely in 2023 for four years.
| 103,305 m2 |
| 7 levels |
| 42 m (Rue Beaubourg side), 45.5 m (Piazza side) |
| 166 m |
| 60 m |
| 3 levels |
| Depth: 18 m; Length: 180 m; Width: 110 m |
| 300,000 m3 |
| 50,000 m3 |
| 15,000 tonnes of steel |
| 11,000 m2 |
| 7,000 m2 |
The BPI holds around 367,000 books, as well as specialist periodicals, audio-visual materials, photographs, and a wealth of other material. The collections are open to the public, but it is not a lending library. It also hosts cultural events and screens documentary films, as well as hosting the Cinéma du Réel documentary film festival.
During the major renovation of the Centre Pompidou from March 2025 until 2030, the BPI will be temporarily relocated to its Lumière building at 40 Avenue des Terroirs de France on 25 August 2025.
In 2021 the artists Arotin & Serghei realised for the re-inauguration of the Place Georges Pompidou after years of works, and in the context of IRCAM's festival Manifeste the intermedial large-scale installation Infinite Light Columns / Constellations of The Future 1–4, Tribute to Constantin Brancusi, installed along Piano's IRCAM Tower, on the opposite site of Brancusi's studio, visible from both, the Place Igor Stravinsky and Place Georges Pompidou. Then president of the Centre Pompidou, Serge Lasvignes, said in his 2015 inauguration speech: "The installation symbolises what the Centre Pompidou wants to be... a multidisciplinary ensemble... it is the resurrection of the initial spirit of the Centre Pompidou with the Piazza, the living heart of creation".
By 1992, the Centre de Création Industrielle was incorporated into the Musée National d'Art Moderne, henceforth called "MNAM/CCI". The CCI, as an organisation with its own design-oriented programme, ceased to exist, while the MNAM started to develop a design and architecture collection in addition to its modern and contemporary art collection.
The Centre Pompidou was intended to handle 8,000 visitors a day.Rockwell, John (9 March 1994), "Success Takes Toll on the Pompidou Center" The New York Times In its first two decades it attracted more than 145 million visitors, more than five times the number first predicted. "Pompidou Centre reopens for 2000" BBC News, 1 January 2000 , more than 180 million people have visited the centre since its opening in 1977. However, until the 1997–2000 renovation, 20 percent of the centre's eight million annual visitors—predominantly foreign tourists—rode the escalators up the outside of the building to the platform for the sights.Riding, Alan (22 December 1999), "Pompidou Unearths the Museum Within" The New York Times
During a three-year renovation ending in its 2000 reopening, the Centre Pompidou improved accessibility for visitorsNayeri, Farah (2 November 2006), "Paris's Pompidou, 30 Next Year, Courts the Young, Branches Out" Bloomberg
Between 1977 and 2006, the centre had 180 million visitors. Since 2006, the global attendance of the centre is no longer calculated at the main entrance, but only those of the Musée National d'Art Moderne and of the public library (5,209,678 visitors for both in 2013), but without the other visitors of the building (929,431 in 2004 or 928,380 in 2006, for only the panorama tickets or cinemas, festivals, lectures, bookshops, workshops, restaurants, etc.). In 2017, the museum had 3.37 million visitors. The public library had 1.37 million.
The Musée National d'Art Moderne saw an increase in attendance from 3.1 million (2010) to 3.6 million visitors in 2011,Pes, Javier, and Emily Sharpe (23 March 2012), "Attendance survey 2011: Brazil's exhibition boom puts Rio on top", The Art Newspaper. . and 3.75 million in 2013. The 2013 retrospective Dalí broke the museum's daily attendance record: 7,364 people a day went to see the artist's work (790,000 in total).Pes, Javier, and Emily Sharpe (24 March 2014), Visitor figures 2013: "Taipei takes top spot with loans from China"
Visitors to the centre totalled more than 5,209,678 in 2013, including 3,746,899 for the museum.
The centre had 3.1 million visitors in 2022, a large increase from 2021 but still below 2019 levels, due to closures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in France.
Launched in 2011 in Chaumont, the museum for the first time went on the road to the French regions with a selection of works from the permanent collection. To do this, it designed and constructed a mobile gallery, which, in the spirit of a circus, will make camp for a few months at a time in towns throughout the country.Morrison, Lennox.(14 October 2011), Ladies and Gentlemen... Cirque Pompidou The Wall Street Journal However, in 2013, the Centre Pompidou halted its mobile-museum project because of the cost.Harris, Gareth (9 July 2013), Pompidou camps out in Dhahran
In 2014, plans were released for a temporary satellite of the Centre Pompidou in the northern French town of Maubeuge close to the Belgian border. The 3,000-square-metre outpost, to be designed by the architects Pierre Hebbelinck and Pierre de Wit, is said to be located at the 17th-century Maubeuge Arsenal for four years. The cost of the project is €5.8 million.Harris, Gareth (6 August 2014), Will Pompidou extend its northern expansion?
In 2015, the city authorities in Libourne, a town in south-western France, proposed a Pompidou branch housed in a former military base called Esog.Harris, Gareth (12 February 2015), Pompidou to pop up all over France
In 2019, the Centre Pompidou announced plans to open a conservation, exhibition and storage space in Massy (Essonne) by 2025. Project backers include the Région Ile-de-France and the French state.Gareth Harris (17 October 2018), Centre Pompidou to expand and move collections to new satellite venue in southern Paris The Art Newspaper.
Under the agreement, approximately 100 works from the Pompidou's 20th and 21st century collection were put on display, while a smaller area is being used for temporary exhibitions. Portraiture and the influence of Picasso will be among the subjects explored in the permanent display, organised by the Pompidou's deputy director Brigitte Leal. Highlights will include works by Alberto Giacometti, René Magritte, Alexander Calder and Constantin Brâncuși, and contemporary works by Sophie Calle, Bruce Nauman and Orlan. The city of Málaga also commissioned Daniel Buren to create a large-scale installation within El Cubo.Rojas, Laurie (26 March 2015), "Málaga's mayor wins race to open Russian museum and pop-up Pompidou"
Following the original five-year agreement that was signed in September 2014, the terms were renewed early 2018 and again in 2024. Under the most recent renewal, Málaga city council agreed to pay the Centre Pompidou an annual fee of €2.7 million over five years (2025–29), rising to €3.1 million in the latter period (2030–34).Gareth Harris (16 July 2024), Centre Pompidou Málaga to remain in place for another decade The Art Newspaper.
In 2007, the then president Bruno Racine announced plans to open a museum carrying the Pompidou's name in Shanghai, with its programming to be determined by the Pompidou. The location chosen for the new museum was a former fire station in the Luwan district's Huaihai Park. However, the scheme did not materialize for several years, reportedly due to the lack of a legal framework for a non-profit foreign institution to operate in China.Harris, Gareth (30 April 2012), Pompidou plans to go global: focus is Brazil, India, China The Art Newspaper In 2019, the Centre Pompidou x West Bund Museum opened to the public, based in a wing of the West Bund Art Museum designed by David Chipperfield.Gareth Harris (30 September 2019), Centre Pompidou's satellite space in Shanghai to open early November The inaugural exhibitions The Shape of Time, Highlights of the Centre Pompidou Collection and Observations, Highlights of the New Media Collection were curated by Marcella Lista.
Other projects include the Pompidou's joint venture with the King Abdulaziz Centre for World Culture, an arts complex incorporating a museum in Dhahran, the building of which has stalled.
Established in 1977 as the institution's US philanthropic arm, the Georges Pompidou Art and Culture Foundation acquires and encourages major gifts of art and design for exhibition at the museum. Centre Pompidou Harris, Gareth (3 May 2012), Pompidou at war with its US friends The Art Newspaper Since 2006, the non-profit support group has brought in donations of 28 works, collectively valued at more than $14 million, and purchased many others.Muchnic, Suzanne (3 May 2009), Centre Pompidou Foundation: L.A.'s French connection Los Angeles Times In 2013, New York-based art collectors Thea Westreich Wagner and Ethan Wagner announced their intention to donate about 300 works by 27 European and international artists to the Centre Pompidou, thereby making one of the largest gifts in the institution's history.Vogel, Carol (15 March 2012), New York Couple's Gift to Enrich Two Museums The New York Times
In 2011, Centre Pompidou admitted that it held three paintings, Les Peupliers (Poplars), Arbres (Trees), and Composition by the artist Fédor Löwenstein that had been looted during the Nazi occupation of France.
In 2021, after the French government restituted a looted Max Pechstein painting to the heirs of Hugo Simon, the Centre Pompidou held an exhibition in a tribute to the persecuted art collector.
Group exhibitions have included:
Outdoors
The sculpture Horizontal by Alexander Calder, a free-standing mobile that is tall, was placed in front of the Centre Pompidou in 2012.
Stravinsky Fountain
The nearby Stravinsky Fountain (also called the Fontaine des automates), on Place Stravinsky, features 16 whimsical moving and water-spraying sculptures by Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint-Phalle, which represent themes and works by composer Igor Stravinsky. The black-painted mechanical sculptures are by Tinguely, the coloured works by de Saint-Phalle. The fountain opened in 1983.Hortense Lyon, La Fontaine Stravinsky, Collection Baccalaureat arts plastiques 2004, Centre national de documentation pedagogique
Place Georges Pompidou
The Place Georges Pompidou in front of the museum is noted for the presence of busking, such as mime artist and . In the spring, miniature carnivals are installed temporarily into the place in front with a wide variety of attractions: bands, caricature and sketch artists, tables set up for evening dining, and even skate board competitions.
Attendance
By the mid-1980s, the Centre Pompidou was becoming the victim of its huge and unexpected popularity, its many activities, and a complex administrative structure. When Dominique Bozo returned to the Centre in 1981 as Director of the Musée National d'Art Moderne, he re-installed the museum, bringing out the full range of its collections and displaying the many major acquisitions that had been made.Russell, John (29 April 1993), "Dominique Bozo, 58, Expert on Picasso, Is Dead" The New York Times
Expansion
Regional branches
In 2010, the Centre Georges Pompidou opened a regional branch, the Centre Pompidou-Metz, in Metz a city 250 kilometres east of Paris. The new museum is part of an effort to expand the display of contemporary arts beyond Paris's large museums. The new museum's building was designed by the architect Shigeru Ban with a curving and asymmetrical pagoda-like roof topped by a spire and punctured by upper galleries. The 77-metre central spire is a nod to the year the Centre Georges Pompidou of Paris was built – 1977. The Centre Pompidou-Metz displays unique, temporary exhibitions from the collection of the Musée National d'Art Moderne, which is not on display at the main Parisian museum.
Since its inauguration, the institution has become the most visited cultural venue in France outside Paris, accommodating 550,000 visitors/year.
International expansion
Europe
Málaga
In 2015, approximately 70 works from the Centre Pompidou's collection went on show in a subterranean glass-and-steel structure called The Cube ( El Cubo) in Málaga. According to the Spanish newspaper El País, the annual €1 million cost of the five-year project were funded by the city council.Harris, Gareth (31 December 2013), Málaga's mayor says the Pompidou is coming The partnership with Málaga was announced by the city's mayor but was not confirmed by Pompidou Centre president Alain Seban until 24 April 2014.Deimling, Kate, "Pompidou Centre Will Launch Short-Term Satellites in Spain, Mexico, and Possibly Brazil, 2014"
Brussels
In March 2018, the Centre Pompidou announced plans to open an offshoot branch in Brussels, under the name KANAL - Centre Pompidou. Housed in a former Citroën garage which was transformed by a team comprising ces noAarchitecten (Brussels), EM2N (Zurich) and Sergison Bates architects (London), the new centre brings together the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, an architecture centre (CIVA Foundation) and public spaces devoted to culture, education and leisure.Harris, Gareth (26 March 2018), Centre Pompidou's Brussels satellite takes shape with announcement of winning architects The Art Newspaper. The Brussels-Capital region — which acquired the Art Deco-style building in October 2015 — is the main funder project, with the conversion costing €122 million.
Asia
In a joint proposal with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presented in 2005, the Centre Pompidou planned to build a museum of modern and contemporary art, design and the media arts in Hong Kong's West Kowloon Cultural District.Vogel, Carol (28 October 2005), From 'Not Interested' to a Collaboration The New York Times
North America
In April 2014, Pompidou president Alain Seban confirmed that after Malaga (Spain), Mexico will be the next site for a pop-up Pompidou Centre. A 58,000-square-foot satellite museum Centre Pompidou x Jersey City in Jersey City, New Jersey, was scheduled to open in 2024, which would have made it the Pompidou's first satellite museum in North America; however, in 2024, city and state funding for the museum was withdrawn.Alex Greenberger (30 June 2024), New Jersey Defunds Centre Pompidou's Jersey City Museum, Saying Project Is 'No Longer Viable' ARTnews. The Jersey City City Council voted in September 2024 to approve a tax abatement, allowing Centre Pompidou x Jersey City to open at an alternative location.
South America
There have been rumours of a pop-up Pompidou satellite museum in Brazil since Alain Seban announced the plan for these temporary locations back in 2012. At a talk on satellite museums at the Guggenheim on 24 April 2014, Alain Seban suggested that Brazil may be the third country to host a temporary satellite museum, after Spain and Mexico.
Management
Presidents
Funding
As a national museum, the Centre Pompidou is government-owned and subsidised by the Ministry of Culture (64.2% of its budget in 2012 : 82.8 on 129 million €), essentially for its staff. The Culture Ministry appoints its directors and controls its gestion, which is nevertheless independent, as Etablissement public à caractère administratif since its creation. In 2011, the museum earned $1.9 million from travelling exhibitions .Carvaja, Doreen (23 January 2011), "'This Space for Rent': In Europe, Arts Now Must Woo Commerce", The New York Times. .
Nazi-looted art
In 1999, the heirs of Alphonse Kann requested the return of Georges Braque The Guitar Player, which the Centre Pompidou had acquired from Heinz Berggruen in 1981.
In popular culture
Film and TV
Other
Public transport
Exhibitions
Several major exhibitions are organised each year on either the first or sixth floors, including both and group exhibitions.
See also
Footnotes
External links
Categories: Official, 1977 Establishments In France, Art Museums And Galleries Established In 1977, Art Museums And Galleries In Paris, Arts Centres In France, Buildings And Structures Completed In 1977, Buildings And Structures In The 4th Arrondissement Of Paris, Busking Venues, Contemporary Art Galleries In France, Event Venues Established In 1977, Georges Pompidou, High-tech Architecture, Libraries Established In 1977, Modern Art Museums In France, Modernist Architecture In France, National Museums Of France, Ove Arup Buildings And Structures, Renzo Piano Buildings, Richard Rogers Buildings
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