Turning his vision to reality, the ardent art collector, François Pinault, has opened the doors to his very own private contemporary art museum called ‘Bourse de Commerce’ in Paris more than 20 years after first floating the idea of creating an art institution in Paris. The museum is the latest venue to house the Pinault Collection, after the Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana in Venice, Italy.
In 2000, the Kering founder chose a deserted island on the Seine, west of Paris, but the suburban city council killed the project. More recently, the opening of the new site in the heart of the capital, next to the Louvre, was delayed several times by the Covid-19 crisis. Finally this week, at a total cost of $194m, the Pinault Collection opened its doors at the Bourse de Commerce.
The museum is housed in a historic building in central Paris that can trace its roots back to the 16th century. Construction on the 160-million-euro project began in 2017 and was completed in March 2020, but successive lockdowns designed to curb the spread of Covid-19 meant that only a handful of V.I.P. visitors have seen the finished result.
Right now, visits are allowed through prior reservations only and no more than 600 people can enter the building at once die to Covid-19 restrictions. Directional traffic lines have also been put in place, although the building is designed for people to roam at will.
The new museum features more than 75,000 square feet of exhibition space, in addition to a restaurant, the Halle aux grains, run by award-winning chefs Michel and Sébastien Bras. The museum joins a series of high-profile private art institutions in Paris, including the Foundation Louis Vuitton, the brainchild of luxury magnate Bernard Arnault, which opened in 2014, and Lafayette Anticipations, the art foundation of the Galeries Lafayette department store group, which bowed in 2018.
Inside, the site’s architect Tadao Ando has built a 9m-high rotunda in pale grey concrete in keeping with the building’s historical character. Its inner circle is occupied by Urs Fischer’s wax copy of the 16th-century Florentine sculptor Giambologna’s Rape of the Sabine Women. Each morning, holes are drilled and wicks are inserted to be lit, causing the progressive meltdown of a work that will disappear over the next six months. The model seemed impressive when it was shown for the first time in Venice’s Arsenale ten-years-ago, but this 29m-wide-space changes the perspective. The pedestal has been raised, but one is unsure whether a few wax chairs surrounding the statue suffice to occupy such a huge space.
Overall, the Bourse de Commerce contains ten exhibition spaces, including seven white-walled galleries, allowing a permanent turn-over that had not been possible in the two sites that Pinault occupies in Venice. Martin Bethenod, director of the Pinault Collection, tells that he plans to set up around 15 new projects each year, but that the first changes will have to wait till next year.
Pinault’s obsession with skulls is reflected in a room hung with 36 small skull paintings by Marlene Dumas. The impermanence of life is also the theme of the monumental wax sculpture by Urs Fischer that takes pride of place in the rotunda.
A gallery dedicated to photography, which gives a central position to works by Martha Williams and Cindy Sherman, finishes with a denunciation by Louise Lawler of the infamous 1987 Helms Amendment. This forbade the US’s Centre for Disease Control (CDC) to provide Aids prevention for fear of “promoting homosexual activities” and was almost unanimously adopted by US senators at the time, including the current US President Joe Biden.