Paris’s former commodities exchange on Saturday has opened its doors again as the French capital’s newest site for artistic exchange, housing billionaire François Pinault’s contemporary art collection. FRANCE 24 reports.
Located a stone’s-throw away from the Louvre museum and dating back to the mid-18th century, the 10,500 square-metre Bourse de Commerce building has been revamped to house Pinault’s collection of contemporary artwork, including paintings, sculptures and videos.
The Bourse’s first exhibition is called Ouverture, meaning “opening” in French.
”Being open to everything is an attitude, an approach to life. If there was an ‘s’ at the end of the word, it would mean open to specific things, but since there isn’t an ‘s’ it means ‘open’, period,” Caroline Bourgeois, curator of the Pinault collection, explains, noting also that the venue’s unique space was taken into careful consideration when designing the exhibition.
“It has to be harmonious to the visitors. They should be surprised as they move through the gallery. We designed it so that each room can be seen from left to right, or right to left. There’s no beginning or end.”
Pinault hired Japanese architect Tadao Ando to turn the former trade establishment into an art gallery.
“This huge cylinder conceived by Tada Ando […] actually follows on from the unique and incredible history of this building - the commodities exchange - which is based on a circular design. And so within this historical architecture, which dates back to 1889, this new rotunda has been inserted to great dramatic effect," Pierre-Antoine Gatier, the chief architect for historical monuments in France, told FRANCE 24.
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