Alain Dominique Perrin, founding president of the Cartier Foundation, and architect Jean Nouvel presented on October 18 this ambitious architectural project combining historical anchoring and powerful technological device, 8,500 m2 accessible to the public including 6,500 m2 of exhibition space, a auditorium with 120 seats, a bookstore, a large educational center and a gourmet restaurant. The Cartier Foundation is therefore positioning itself as a major player in the urban renewal of the first arrondissement of Paris, and strengthens the abundant cultural offering in the immediate vicinity of the Louvre Museum and the Museum of Decorative Arts, and in two steps from the Bourse de Commerce-Pinault Collection.
40 years of commitment to contemporary creation
Since its birth, the Cartier Foundation has made it a point of honor to “program the unexpected”, a line made possible by the creative freedom granted, since 1984, to artists hosted in residence in Jouy-en-Josas during the first decade of its history. From 1984 to 1994 at the Montcel estate, in a castle surrounded by an immense park, crazy artistic adventures intertwined, with the debut of now renowned artists (Chéri Samba, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Cai Guo-Qiang ,…), epic shared moments (the challenge of exhibiting Ferraris on a scenography by Andrée Putman or the surprise reformation of Velvet Undergroud for an evening) and claimed incursions into all areas of Art.
Jean-Pierre Raynaud, The Golden Pot, 1985. Commissioned for the park © Jean-Pierre Raynaud / ADAGP, Paris, 2024 Photographer © Hugues Colson
This assumed side step immediately makes the Cartier Foundation a real UFO in the French cultural landscape, especially since it is the first corporate foundation dedicated to contemporary art (at the very sources of the “Léotard” law). » on patronage of July 27, 1987) and that it advocates its strict separation from the commercial development of Maison Cartier.
View of the exhibition The Sixties 1960-1969, The Triumphant Decade, 1986 Photographer © Jean-Michel Tardy
The “change of scenery” of the Raspail era
In 1994, the Foundation moved to Boulevard Raspail in a glass and steel building designed by Jean Nouvel, a great name in international contemporary architecture, for a strong new gesture and a bold decision: that of designing an open space and transparent allowing infinite possibilities. Architectural translation of the philosophy of the Cartier Foundation, its 1,200 square meters are almost devoid of walls and picture rails, modular and open onto the surrounding garden. An oasis, all in reflections, in the heart of the 14th arrondissement which has since redoubled its inventions alongside artists but also mathematicians, botanists and philosophers, to create extraordinary and out-of-the-box exhibitions bringing audiences to constant “change of scenery”.
The Cartier Foundation building located on Boulevard Raspail in Paris, designed by Jean Nouvel and inaugurated in 1994 © Jean Nouvel, Emmanuel Cattani & Associés / ADAGP, Paris, 2024
In-depth work made possible by the years of complicity and loyalty established with all those who join the history of the Cartier Foundation, and its more than 300 exhibitions presented in France and internationally to date: director David Lynch, the singer Patti Smith, the photographer Claudia Andujar, the Indian artists Yanomamis, the thinker Paul Virilio, the director and photographer Raymond Depardon, the designer Alessandro Mendini, the artists Ron Mueck, Matthew Barney, Fabrice Hyber,… some of whose portraits cover the bay windows of the future spaces on Place du Palais-Royal.
View of the Ron Mueck exhibition, 2013 © Ron Mueck © Jean Nouvel / ADAGP, Paris, 2024 Photographer © Axel Dahl
At the Palais-Royal, a protean “machine”
Until March 16, 2025, it is up to Olga de Amaral, 92 years old, star of the Colombian artistic scene and textile art (Fiber Art), to end the Raspail era in style with her most major retrospective ever organized in Europe. At the end of next year, at the opening of the new building, the Cartier Foundation will hold up a mirror to its history, and in doing so to contemporary creation, through a wide selection of works (between 600 and 1000) among the 4500 what is included in its eclectic collection built up over the course of its programming.
View of the construction site of the future spaces of the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art, place du Palais-Royal, Paris View of -1 from the ground floor. July 2024 Photo © Martin Argyroglo
More than elsewhere, the scenography of this unique presentation will be eagerly awaited, Jean Nouvel having created a gigantic stage for contemporary arts: a titanic technological device composed of five platforms spread over 150 meters long (1200 m2), from the Place du Palais-Royal on rue Marengo, i.e. the entirety of this Haussmannian block built in 1855. Mobile, these trays can be placed in eleven different vertical positions for multiple possible configurations and perspectives, depending on their arrangement in space (total alignment or partial, variable geometries).
View of the construction site of the future spaces of the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art, Place du Palais-Royal, Paris Platform 1 under construction. December 2023 Photo © Martin Argyroglo
« It’s a bit like a super-theater, where very heavy floors are liftedexplains Jean Nouvel. This innovation is not only functional or scenographic. For me it is architectural, in the sense that it becomes dynamic. The innovation is to have all the possible altitudes, all these lights with variable intensity, up to total darkness, depending on the degree of closure of the glass roofs and side windows. The Cartier Foundation will probably be the institution that will offer the most differentiation of its spaces, the most ways of exhibiting and the most points of view. The power of the platforms will make it possible to accommodate very heavy works, to hang them in a completely new way… It’s being able to do here what we couldn’t do elsewhere, by changing the display system. »
View of the future spaces of the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art, Place du Palais-Royal, Paris. Rendering of platform 1 overlooking rue de Rivoli. © Jean Nouvel / ADAGP, Paris, 2024
Reinventing the exhibition in the 21st century
In his contextualist approach, Jean Nouvel not only projected his vision of the exhibition space into this building, but also of its roots in the city. On the ground floor, the facade will be glazed along the entire length of rue de Rivoli and rue Saint-Honoré, so that the eye can cross the space from one street to another; and on the zenithal glass roofs, trees, like a perched forest, will be installed.
The building which will house the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art from 2025, located on Place du Palais-Royal in Paris, whose interior architecture is designed by Jean Nouvel. Photo © Luc Boegly
« This transparency will anchor the feeling of belonging to the heart of Paris. The Cartier Foundation will thus create a territory of art, which can be explored from the inside or from the outside, in a game of osmosis and perpetual shock », affirms Jean Nouvel. This protean place should constantly create surprise, and aims to revolutionize the very approach to art, whether in the design of artistic projects, in the curatorial approach or in the visiting experience. A boldness that would be the signature of the Cartier Foundation.
Fondation Cartier, a new place for contemporary art
