EXPOSITION GÉNÉRALE AT FONDATION CARTIER - JEAN NOUVEL'S ARCHITECTURAL PROJECT

 

EXPOSITION GÉNÉRALE AT FONDATION CARTIER

JEAN NOUVEL'S ARCHITECTURAL PROJECT

October 25, 2025 – August 23, 2026

EXPOSITION GÉNÉRALE AT FONDATION CARTIER

October 25, 2025 – August 23, 2026

Exposition Générale retraces forty years of international contemporary art through emblematic works and fragments of exhibitions that have shaped the programming of the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain since its founding in 1984. Illustrating the institution’s history and openness to the world, it highlights major pieces in its collection, which has evolved over the years as a reflection of this programming, and offers visitors the opportunity to rediscover nearly 600 works by over 100 artists.

The title Exposition Générale refers to the exhibitions organized by the Grands Magasins du Louvre department store starting in the late 19th century, in the very Haussmannian building the Fondation Cartier now occupies, originally constructed for the first Parisian Exposition Universelle in 1855. Bringing together objects and goods of all kinds, these events broadened the cultural field and facilitated the circulation of new knowledge. Jean Nouvel’s architectural project engages with the building’s new legacy, reimagining the space in a way that opens the door to new approaches to exhibition-making. T he exhibition design, by Formafantasma, references the material history of display systems, exploring and reactivating the social and experimental aspects of these commercial exhibitions that have influenced the evolution of museum practices.

EXPOSITION GÉNÉRALE: A NEW MAP OF CONTEÖPORARY ARTISTIC PRODUCTION

Reflecting the multitude of artistic commitments embraced by the institution and structured around four broad themes, Exposition Générale sketches an alternative map of contemporary artistic production that reinterprets the encyclopedic museum model: an ephemeral architectural laboratory (Machines d’architecture); a reflection on living worlds and their preservation (Être nature); a space for experimentation with materials and techniques (Making Things); and visionary narratives that blend science, technology, and fiction (Un monde réel). In addition to this thematic organization, the exhibition includes series and presentations of works that trace the individual and collaborative paths of key artists from the Fondation Cartier collection.

MACHINES D ’ARCHITECTURE

On the first platform of the exhibition space designed by Jean Nouvel, Machines d’architecture envisions a city reinvented through anti-monuments, models of utopian cities, and unbuilt or imaginary projects. Within the museum, architecture is not only displayed, but traversed and interrogated—examined in its social role, cultural impact, and its uses, transforming the exhibition into a space for experimentation. Machines d’architecture offers an expansive reading of the architectural discipline, reflecting its diversity of approaches. Throughout the exhibition, architecture is examined through its legacies, its materiality, and its contemporary relevance, and explored through a range of forms—drawings, prototypes, installations, and full-scale reconstructions. Together, these varied explorations overlay the Haussmannian heritage with multiple ways of considering, experiencing, and conceiving space. They present alternative visions that claim architecture as a transformative force, capable of articulating new futures.

 In his Petite Cathédrale, a small-scale ecumenical church, master designer and architect Alessandro Mendini plays with scale to unsettle the senses, blurring the boundaries between art, design, and architecture. In Chapel of Valley, architect Junya Ishigami seeks to free the discipline from its legacies, imagining a future in which the divide between nature and architecture nearly disappears. By contrast, Kinshasa: Project for the Third Millennium, one of the “extreme maquettes” by sculptor Bodys Isek Kingelez, and the meticulously detailed, bird’s-eye urban landscapes of Mamadou Cissé, propose progressive, utopian visions of urbanism, illustrating both its profound influence on the organization of society and the power of individuals within it. Visible from the Rue de Rivoli, the Salón de eventos, a colorful ballroom specially created by architect Freddy Mamani for the Fondation Cartier’s new site, stands as a vivid reminder of the power of architecture to shape cultural worlds.

ÊTRE NATURE  

Mindful of the relationship between art and the living world, Exposition Générale invites visitors to listen, look, and learn from all forms of life. Être nature brings the forest into the building—not as a counterpoint to the city—but as an ecosystem equal to the urban environment in richness and complexity, where cohabitation is tangible. The exhibition is centered on groups of works that carry the echoes of landscapes, living languages, and soundscapes in different spaces of the building. 

Être nature gathers works from regions as varied as Vendée, the Amazon, the Massif Central, and Oceania’s island territories. Through their materiality and symbolism, these works interrogate the relationship between humans and their natural environment, as well as the stories, traditions, and knowledge that emerge from it.

The section explores art’s role in transforming our relationship with the living world, and in nurturing the creation of a new ecological ethic. The works assembled here give form to narratives that question the museum’s responsibility to conserve the living world and present the exhibition as a space for expressing its forms and languages—forms and languages that are inseparable from, and indispensable to, the interpretation of human cultures.

Suspended at the center of the section, Miracéus is a monumental installation by Solange Pessoa, composed of thousands of bird feathers. Imbued with spirituality and shamanic resonance, it invites viewers to plunge into the wild, animal core of humanity. Claudia Andujar’s photography series and the drawings by members of the Yanomami community address the disappearance of Indigenous peoples in the northern Amazon, and their struggle to preserve their lands and culture. Lothar Baumgarten’s immersive practice, employing ethnographic methods, documents the singularity of their threatened way of life and interrogates the colonial legacies that endanger Indigenous existence. The relationship between people, land, language, and history is also central to the photographic and cinematic work of Raymond Depardon.

Nature is a major source of inspiration for Bruno Novelli and Santidio Pereira, leading figures in a new generation of Brazilian artists, whose works reflect the diversity of its motifs and forms, evoking a complete fusion among the spheres of the living world. Linking these practices to a wider network of references, the exhibition fosters dialogue between different geographies and also incorporates elements of Western heritage: Giuseppe Penone draws both his inspiration and his materials from the forest, capturing the imprint of natural forms through sculpture and rubbing; Robert Adams’s photography captures the vast beauty of the American West, alongside the scars left by industrial growth, consumerism, and pollution. At the heart of the urban setting, the building’s underground level houses Night Would Not Be Night Without the Cricket, a sound installation created specifically for the Fondation Cartier’s new building by pioneering bioacoustician Bernie Krause in collaboration with Soundwalk Collective. Composed from 5,000 hours of field recordings of natural sounds, it transforms the subterranean space into an immersive, sonic forest.

MAKING THINGS

Making Things embodies a broad vision of contemporary art. By valuing encounters and permeability between disciplines, the exhibition seeks to redraw the boundaries between fine and applied arts, institutional and self-taught practices, and to decompartmentalize artistic mediums. 

Bringing together cross-disciplinary approaches, Making Things asserts experimentation as a working method. The artists reinterpret ancestral techniques to explore their contemporary significance. Materiality, forms, know-how, and production processes become vehicles for storytelling, memory, and transmission. Sculptural, textile, ceramic, and pictorial practices are transformed, hybridized, and revitalized for new purposes and uses at the intersection of art, applied arts, craft, and design. Through this plurality of gestures and techniques, Making Things offers an inclusive reading of contemporary artistic production, challenging cultural hierarchies and paving the way for new formal possibilities in the future.

This section renews the ethos of the eponymous 1988 exhibition devoted to the creative work of Issey Miyake, blending craft, technology, and material exploration. With his “gazebo”—a square roofless structure with walls of thin steel bars, situated beneath the building’s f ifth platform—Andrea Branzi reveals his vision of a “weak and diffuse” architecture, in which flexibility and permeability prevail over a rigid structure. For Branzi, this is a response to new user needs and the fluidity of contemporary society. Opposite this structure, Muro en rojos, Olga de Amaral’s monumental work, reflects her explorations of the occupation of space undertaken at the end of the 1960s, with pieces gradually freed from the wall to become mobile, architectural elements in their own right. Gustavo Perez delves into ceramics through a subtle interplay between structure and surface; while Jean-Michel Othoniel revitalizes the use of glass in sculpture. T he figurines of the Brazilian artists Véio, carved from pieces of dead wood, and Izabel Mendez Da Cunha, modeled in ceramic and inspired by everyday life, reveal practices deeply rooted in their environment —serving as a tribute to the history, spirituality, and folk art of Brazil’s Nordeste region, from which the two artists hail. Finally, these material explorations engage in dialogue with works that transcend the conventions of painting: Simon Hantaï investigates the plastic potential of canvas through folding; Gérard Garouste reimagines the relationship between painting and language, drawing from myth and literature; Damien Hirst and Joan Mitchell experiment with the energy and physicality of the painter’s gesture to depict nature.

UN MONDE RÉEL

Un monde réel explores the relationship between science, fiction, and artistic creation. This section of the exhibition brings together artists and researchers, who harness their creativity for projects that draw on mathematical languages, scientific data, and technological universes to imagine new ways of perceiving and representing reality. Through immersive installations, maps, photography series, and audiovisual works, Un monde réel brings together tales of exploration tied to progress, astronomy, and dystopian and technological visions. Some works are grounded in real data, offering precise readings of contemporary issues—climate, migration, space exploration— while imagining evolving forms capable of adapting to transformations of the world they reflect. 

Other works draw on fiction or dreams, which —alongside science—represent two essential dimensions through which artists interpret, analyze, and invent reality. Un monde réel juxtaposes different forms of knowledge and ways of interpreting the world. T he works perceptively chart the present and its possible futures, interrogating modern fascination with technology and its ambivalences—embracing utopia and havoc, creation and destruction, speculation and threat. 

Opening this section, Tracing Falling Sky by Sarah Sze explores how the proliferation of digital images has altered our relationship to time, memory, and objects, inviting viewers to experience the ever-thinner boundary between material and virtual. EXIT, the immersive installation created in 2008 by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, based on an original idea by the philosopher Paul Virilio, uses data collected by scientists to map different types of migratory flows caused by economic, political, and climatic factors. The installation has been updated in 2025 for the inaugural exhibition of the Fondation Cartier, Place du Palais-Royal.

Panamarenko’s utopian submarine conjures the spirit of exploration that defined modern times, while the drawings of Shantaram Chintya Tumbada, an artist from the Indian Warli community, reinterpret ancestral myths, using visual play to propose an original reading of human invention. Fascinated by contemporary cosmology, the Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang connects ancient knowledge with a global vision of the universe—embracing Earth, the planets, and the cosmos through the use of gunpowder. In his work, this ancient Chinese invention becomes a symbol of our technological and nuclear age.

Un monde réel also explores the possible points of convergence between mathematics and art, and their shared drive to make and remake reality through research and exploration, in the works of Jessica Wynne and Jean-Michel Alberola. These stand alongside the dreamlike drawings of Mœbius, in which the boundaries between human, animal, plant, and mineral dissolve, revealing the artist’s fascination with metaphysical questions; and Paul Virilio’s photography series, which evokes an anachronistic world, f loating between past and future, relics and post apocalyptic visions.

SOLO AND COLLABORATIVE EXHIBITIONS

The exhibition itinerary is structured around these four thematic sections, which also spotlight the works of major artists with whom the Fondation Cartier has built decades-long relationships, represented in its collection through significant pieces and series. T hese include Graciela Iturbide, Chéri Samba, Matthew Barney, Patti Smith, William Eggleston, Francesca Woodman, and Tadanori Yokoo. The itinerary also incorporates spaces specially designed to showcase single, emblematic works: masterpieces, by the likes of Vija Celmins, James Lee Byars, Bill Viola, James Turrell, Joan Mitchell, and Damien Hirst, recalling iconic exhibitions that have marked the Fondation Cartier’s history.

At times, the Fondation has embraced encounters, fostering relationships of creative and conceptual affinity. Exposition Générale revisits some of these moments of collaboration, recreating novel examples of shared projects sparked by such encounters, for example, between the painter Peter Halley and the architect Alessandro Mendini; the artists Raymond Hains and Pierrick Sorin; photographers Fernell Franco and Oscar Muñoz; and architect Bijoy Jain, the ceramicist Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye, and video artist Ali Kazma. These are not group exhibitions in the conventional sense, but rather close collaborations that emerged from extraordinary human and artistic encounters.

ALESSANDRO MENDINI

Petite Cathédrale,2002

Wood, Metal, Glass Paste Mosaic, Glass, Perfume, Sound

Dimensions: 527 × 239 × 319 cm Acquisition 2002

Acquisition 2002

BODY ISEK KINGELEZ

Projet pour le Kinshasa

du Troisième Millénaire, 1997

Wood, Cardboard, Foamboard, Paper, Metal, Various Materials

Dimensions: 100 × 332 × 332 cm approx.

Acquisition 1998

ALESSANDRO MENDINI & PETER HALLEY

Code Warrior,1997

Peintures Acrylique, Fluorescente et Métallique Sur Toile Diptyque,

Dimensions: 257,5 × 120,5 × 9,5 cm

Acquisition 1999

Wood, Acrylic Painting

Dimensions: 525 × 435 × 100 cm

Acquisition 2014

CHRISTINA BOLTANSKI

Absalon

Propositions d’habitations, 1990
Wood, Cardboard, Plaster, Acrylicpaint,

Fluorescent Tubes, Metal

Dimensions: 108 × 610 × 610 cm

Acquisition 1990

ABSALON

Propositions d’habitations, 1990
Wood, Cardboard, Plaster, Acrylicpaint,

Fluorescent Tubes, Metal

Dimensions: 108 × 610 × 610 cm

Acquisition 1990

ANNETTE MESSAGER

Mes Ouvrages, 1988

70 Framed Gelatin Silver Prints, Colored Pencil

Dimensions Variables

Acquisition 1996

© Annette Messager / Adagp, Paris, 2025

ANDREI UJICÃ,

Unknown Quantıty, 2003 - 2005

PANAMARENKO

Panama, Spitzbergen,

Nova Zemblaya, 1996

Steel, Acrylic Glass, Paint, Engine, Fluorescent Tubes,

Camera, Monitor, Various Materials

Dimensions: 600 × 705 × 344 cm

Acquisition 1998

MAKUNAIMÎ

Cria o Espelho Universal, 2021.

Acrylic on Canvas

Dimensions: 111×223 cm.

Collection of the Fondation Cartier Pour l’art Contemporain

© Jaider Esbell Estate

JEAN – MICHEL OTHONIEL

Paysage Amoureux, 1997

Murano Glass, Red and Mauve Amber, Nylon Threads

Dimensions Variable

Acquisition 1998

© Jean-Michel Othoniel/ Adagp, Paris, 2025

 

A glass work : Jean-Michel Othoniel, Paysage amoureux, 1997

Since the late 1980s, Jean-Michel Othoniel has been seeking to reinvent sculptural practice, bringing back the use of precious materials in a language that is at once poetic and symbolic. Paysage amoureux is composed of strings of beads adorned with rings and blown glass hearts, a technique the artist has turned into his signature. Playing with the geometry and repetition of elements and motifs, this sculpture is reminiscent of jewelry. Behind its apparent formal lightness, the work presents objects symbolizing romantic passion and celebrates an erotic relationship to the body, in a drive to re-enchant human relationships, in their vulnerability and beauty. More than merely ornamental, for the artist, beauty is a way of striving for humans’ harmonization with their environment.

EXIT 2008‑2025

DillerScofidio + Renfro, Mark Hansen,

Laura Kurgan et Ben Rubin, en collaboration avec

Robert Gerard Pietrusko et Stewart Smith

22 min 43 s

Diamètre de l’installation : 8,8 m

Hauteur de l’installation : 4 m

SARAH SZE

Tracing Fallen Sky, 2020

Version 2025

Mixed Media, Stainless Steel, Marbledust, Archival Pigment Prints,

Video Projector, Pendulum

Dimensions Variable

Acquisition 2022

2025 Update 

Since the late 1990s, Sze has been assembling and curating objects from daily life, and using them to create delicate, complex installations that challenge the boundaries between painting, sculpture and architecture. She has also introduced video into her oeuvre, exploring the ways in which a proliferation of images can transform our relationships with objects, time and memory. She gathers objects and images from both the physical and digital world, which she goes on to piece together into complex multimedia works that challenge notions of scale, inviting the viewer to both microscopic observation, and a macroscopic perspective on the infinite. Sze makes use of several media, from sculpture to painting by way of drawing, engraving, video and installations. Her work notably questions notions of entropy and temporality, and explores the ephemeral nature of materiality.

FONDATION CARTIER

FONDATION CARTIER

A PLACE FOR THE UNEXPECTED BY JEAN NOUVEL

I have always imagined the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain as a haven, a welcoming sanctuary where everyone is invited to discover the art of today. Not just another neutral gallery, but a dynamic space of uninhibited inspiration, a grand workshop that adapts to artists’ works and ideas. The building’s mission is to redefine spaces and introduce new ways to exhibit that harmonize with history, while also unveiling that history’s essence. Repurposing the building at 2 Place du Palais-Royal in this way meant making it more open and generous toward Paris, but also more representative of the city. By nurturing the emergence of new art forms here, the Fondation Cartier doubly enriches the space: it welcomes history into the heart of the Fondation Cartier and instils creation in the heart of the city.

he Fondation Cartier is not simply its new building—it is a neighborhood in the district of the Palais-Royal, where its identity must be expressed in an exceptional way. Perhaps it could be the final element in this urban composition, among the strategic, administrative, cultural, and political landmarks surrounding Place du Palais-Royal. These buildings, shaped by different eras, have accumulated layers of history—creating, enriching, and contrasting with one another. At street level, the fully glazed facade along Rue de Rivoli and Rue Saint-Honoré allows the gaze to traverse the space from one street to another, blurring the boundaries between interior and exterior. This transparency of the side facades reinforces a sense of belonging to the streets and history of Paris, in the same way that the overhead glass roofs, planted with trees, create a suspended grove through whose canopy the eye perceives the light and shadows that change with time and the exhibitions, and the sun’s rays that blend with the motifs created by the hues of nature and the colors of the sky. This sense of boundless space is also felt from Place du Palais-Royal: the interior of the Haussmannian block, open along its full length, provides a 150-meter view as far as Rue de Marengo. T he focus of the architectural approach was to unveil the void—its depth, its height, its presence. It must be understood that contemporary architecture is increasingly moving in this direction. The concept is no longer about constructing a space but of building inside space itself. This void becomes the place for expression—the promise of endless possibilities.

Moving into such an impressive place as this—on account of its location and history—entails an act of invention, but not necessarily something manifested in steel or stone. Rather, what takes root is a different way of doing things—a way of thinking that prioritizes artists’ greatest possible freedom of expression. A place like this requires boldness, a fearless creativity that artists might not exhibit in other institutional settings. Like the Greeks, I have always believed that a museum is the perfect place to generate ideas, to discuss them, to be present, to be elsewhere, to be inside, to be outside, to be in the city… My goal is to offer this possibility in each of my projects of this kind. Architecture is a testament to its era. The most important aspect is the change in perspective —the ability to reveal what is directly linked to history.

he architectural design of the Fondation Cartier building on Boulevard Raspail was undoubtedly initially elusive: the significance of the “almost nothing,” the way the architectural elements blend seamlessly without asserting themselves, the changing light that alters with the seasons, responding to budding leaves, to rain… It is a building of presence.

At the Palais-Royal, this continuous interplay of variations unfolds inside. In this architectural space, which retains only the characteristic facade and a few structural elements from the 19th century, one feels as if enveloped by an industrial cathedral distinguished by an airy yet expansive framework. It emanates a strong presence and power through its five steel platforms, with their evident mobility, which contrast starkly with the building’s Haussmannian exterior. It’s a little like a gigantic theater, where massive floors can be raised—a concealed dynamic. The space’s true innovation lies in its adaptability, accommodating all possible altimetries, all the varying intensities of light, even to the point of complete darkness, depending on the degree of closure of the glass roofs and side facades.

It is probable that the Fondation Cartier will be the institution offering the greatest versatility in its spaces, the most ways to exhibit, and the widest range of perspectives. The strength of its platforms allows for the display of extremely heavy works and entirely new means of exposition. The aim is to achieve what would be impossible elsewhere, and to reinvent the very manner of exhibition. It is an approach that sets the stage for uniquely distinctive exhibitions, fashioned by the imaginations of artists, curators, and scenographers. It is a space of limitless possibilities, where environments can be towering, deep, or the most compressed possible. Depending on the configuration chosen, these geometrically variable spaces will be continuously reinvented and explored with each project. This very adaptation is what should leave a lasting impression—the fact that this evolving space, visible from Rue de Rivoli and Rue Saint-Honoré, never ceases to surprise.

It is vital to keep pace with the spirit of our time, to be fully immersed in the art of the moment. This can only happen if this haven grants artists complete freedom to express their works, and that the floors, walkways, and ceilings are similarly unrestricted. The space is a foundation for invention—for the inspired, and, naturally, for artists as true inventors. Each empty space becomes an opportunity for expression. Every surface—the floors, walls, columns, and glass roofs— serves to provoke thought. Every opening frames a view, inviting exploration from every perspective. Every material, every color, every unexpected detail is there to inspire the artists, to challenge them, to spur them toward transformation if that is what they want. Everything has been conceived to foster and provoke invention, to evoke emotion. The Fondation Cartier will be a place for the unexpected, drawing us into the magnetic attraction of 21st-century Paris. Its purpose is to disorient, to offer a fresh perspective on the place of art in the city’s life—in its streets, its squares…

A living, thriving art scene, in the very heart of Paris.

ANNE SOPHIE

FONDATION CARTIER

FOREWORD

Alain Dominique Perrin

President of the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain

Chris Dercon

Managing Director of the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain

In October 2025, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain leaves its premises at 261 Boulevard Raspail and moves to the center of Paris. Its new address, 2 Place du Palais-Royal, opposite the Louvre, is a historic 1855 building whose interior volumes underwent a radical redesign by the architect Jean Nouvel. The new spaces expand upon the principles of the Raspail building the architect designed for the Fondation Cartier: made entirely of glass and steel, the transparent structure and its play with immateriality shook up exhibition practices upon opening in 1994. Today Jean Nouvel’s new architectural project continues to explore architecture’s potential to reshape the esthetics of the museum, doing so this time within a Haussmannian building that dates back to 1855, which previously housed the Grand Hôtel du Louvre (1855–1887), then the Grands Magasins du Louvre (1887–1974), and finally the Louvre des Antiquaires (1978–2019). The governing principle of the spaces is a mechanism that enables a myriad of possible transformations of the interior of the building in service to artistic intention and exhibition design. Behind the fully preserved exterior, we find a dynamic architecture composed of five mobile platforms which allow the creation of an unexpected range of volumes, voids, and spaces, firmly placing the design of the exhibition space at the heart of the institution’s artistic program.

he dynamic architecture of the Fondation Cartier is itself inscribed in a history of architecture in which Paris has played a major role. In 1925, the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts marked the beginning of an architectural revolution. On this occasion, the modern decorative arts workshops of the booming department stores showcased presentations in which applied art and industrial production techniques converged, establishing them as key players of the architectural innovations of the time. The Studium Louvre pavilion, a shopping mall designed by French architect Albert Laprade for the Grands Magasins du Louvre, was erected alongside the international pavilions on the Esplanade des Invalides and contributed to endowing architecture with a key role in the development of the modern exhibition. Other architectural presentations also embodied this revolution which was soon to unfold, and the conflicting ideologies that would accompany them: Le Corbusier’s Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau, the City in Space structure designed by Frederick J. Kiesler for the Austrian section, and, above all, the Soviet pavilion by Konstantin Melnikov—a pioneering Cubist edifice—heralded the dawn of a mobile and fluid form of architecture. It was also at this same 1925 exhibition that Jean Prouvé was awarded a diploma of honor for his utilitarian, modular furniture. Later, he would join forces with architects Eugène Beaudouin and Marcel Lods, as well as engineer Vladimir Bodiansky, to design the dynamic architecture of the Maison du Peuple in Clichy (1939). With its modular floors and walls, the building was the first attempt at creating a multifunctional space, whose ambition was to offer the greatest flexibility and possibilities to its users.

Another Parisian landmark that aspired to modularity was the Centre Georges Pompidou, whose initial project, designed by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano in 1971, featured mobile levels. Here, museum architecture was already being conceived in response to the multiplicity of uses it was intended to accommodate, some even unknown at the time. The Centre Georges Pompidou was inspired by Cedric Price’s Fun Palace, an educational and cultural complex commissioned in 1960 by theater director Joan Littlewood for London’s East End. The site was supposed to host an interactive multidisciplinary program, capable of adapting to the changing social conditions of the day. Although it was never actually built, the Fun Palace had a decisive influence on the architecture of cultural institutions, their imperatives, and objectives. In 1994, Cedric Price would write: “The 21st-century ‘culture center’ will utilize calculated uncertainty and conscious incompleteness to produce a catalyst for invigorating change, whilst always producing ‘the harvest of the quiet eye.’”

his pursuit of modular spaces has prominently featured in projects that transformed the history of architecture: Rem Koolhaas’s Maison à Bordeaux (1994–1998) and Lafayette Anticipations (Paris, 2012–2018), as well as The Shed (New York, 2015–2019) designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Highly experimental, these last two projects had to comply with the regulations that public buildings must adhere to, as well as the challenges that arise with inventing operative models to program these new types of spaces. Drawing on the lessons learned from these architectural sites, the new spaces designed by Jean Nouvel for the Fondation Cartier are in line with these efforts to design a cultural institution that is both modular and adaptable.

Beyond the dialogue on the evolution of museum spaces and what they should welcome and make possible, Jean Nouvel’s architectural project also responds to the historical urban Parisian context in which it is situated. The Grands Magasins du Louvre once played an essential role in the heart of the capital’s cultural life. Through his transformation of the site, Jean Nouvel highlights the existing architectural and urban elements that exemplify this historical modernity of the 19th century. The tall picture windows that have been added and which run along the facades make the building transparent and reveal the entirety of the interior from one end to the other, forming a visual system that reinterprets the building’s vitrines, which once allowed passersby to gaze at the wide variety of objects on display as they strolled by. The addition of a glass awning, reminiscent of the one that once ran along that same Rue Saint Honoré and Rue de Marengo, reinforces this unique urban unity and merges the experiences of the street, the historic arcades, and the interior spaces. Similarly, the addition of three glass ceilings, equipped with shutters that vary brightness levels, allows the sky and natural light to feature as an element in the exhibition spaces. The dynamic architecture is further strengthened by the porosity that exists with the exterior, profoundly affecting the visitor’s experience of the building, depending on the season or time of day it is visited. […]

In a sense, this new space created for the Fondation Cartier represents a culmination of Jean Nouvel’s thinking on museum spaces. His vision has been built progressively, through each of the museum projects he has designed over the past fifty years. It began theoretically with the competition for the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1971 and continued with the Institut du monde arabe (1987), the Fondation Cartier Boulevard Raspail (1994), the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac (2006), and the Louvre Abu Dhabi (2017), architectural projects that can be said to have deconstructed the dominant codes of museological practices. […]

T he new spaces of the Fondation Cartier testify to the collaboration between the Fondation and Jean Nouvel, which spans almost forty years. Beyond the building on the Boulevard Raspail and the one located on the Place du Palais-Royal, Jean Nouvel designed multiple projects that reflect the institution’s evolution.

While these spaces never actually saw the light of day, they have contributed to his theories about museum spaces. In 1986, he first imagined a glass and steel building integrated into the landscape of the Montcel Estate in Jouy-en-Josas, where the Fondation Cartier had been located since 1984. In 2009, as part of the urban development project for the Île Seguin, he sketched plans for a concrete and glass structure to house its exhibitions. Finally, in 2018, Jean Nouvel designed an extension for the Boulevard Raspail site on the neighboring grounds of the Saint-Vincent-de-Paul Hospital, which had been abandoned for several years.

T he Fondation Cartier has always placed the practice of architecture at the heart of its programming, considering it to be a vector for interdisciplinary dialogue. Today, at 2 Place du Palais-Royal, the institution materializes a vision of architecture which enables a merging of disciplines, visual art, performance, theater, science, and new technologies. Merging with public space, past and future coexist in a building that is at once an extension of the urban landscape, a reflection of its history, and the perfect application of a dynamic architecture at the service of a cultural institution.

FONDATION CARTIER

VIRGIL ORTIZ

Opera Singer Mono, 2001

Red Clay From Cochiti, White Clay, Black Pigments

From Wild Spinach, String

Dimensions: 56 × 30.5 × 13.5 cm

Acquisition 2001

OLGA DE AMARAL

Muro en Rojos, 1982

Wool, horsehair

Dimensions: 700 × 830 cm

Acquisition 2025

 

A textile work : Olga de Amaral, Muro en rojos, 1982

The Colombian artist Olga de Amaral has contributed to the transformation of the textile medium. Measuring seven meters high by eight meters wide, Muro en rojos is part of the Muros tejidos, or “woven walls” series, in which she explores the tridimensionality of textile. Freed both from its decorative function and its dependence on the wall, textile art here displays an entirely sculptural and even architectural quality. Composed of six panels encompassing thousands of cloth strips, this work is emblematic of de Amaral’s experimentations with the relationship between space, color, and material, with inspiration drawn from the landscapes of her native country. With its yellow, ochre, and red colors, the work reflects the artist’s attachment to Colombian landscapes, evoking both fallen autumn leaves, and the bricks of Bogota houses.

SHEROANAWE HAKIHIIWE + FABRICE HYBER

Sans Titre, 2023

Acrylic, Charcoal and Paper Glued on Canvas

Dimensions: 220 × 500 cm

Acquisition 2023

© FabriceHyber / Adagp, Paris, 2025

SOLANGE PESSOA

Miracéus, 2014‑2018

Feathers on Fabric

Dimensions: 455 × 1110 × 888 cm Approx.

36 Oils on Paper

Dimensions: 67.5 × 68.5 cm (Each)

Acquisition 2024

 

Solange Pessoa is a Brazilian artist, originally from Ferros in the state of Minas Gerais.

She is renowned for her multidisciplinary work and, since the 1980s, has explored themes that are deeply rooted in nature, memory, the body, spirituality, and life cycles, using such varied media as sculpture, painting, video, installations, and drawing. Beyond the dialogue between her artistic practice and Brazilian history, Solange Pessoa's work holds a special place in Brazilian contemporary art. It touches on numerous references as well as on the memory of colonial history and native cosmogonies.

The use of organic matter such as soil, leather, animal fat, feathers, hair, bones, and blood is characteristic of her work. This approach has allowed her to develop a unique, extremely sensorial, and visceral artistic language that alludes to an intimate relationship between humans, animals, plant life, and minerals. With her work, in which she transforms matter, she calls forth primitive, mythical, and ritual forms. By formalising her quest for a deeper relationship with the Earth, its non-human inhabitants, and the history of human origins with her powerful, meditative installations, the artist questions transformation, fertility, the organic, and the sacred.

HUANG YONG PING

Devons-Nous Encore Construire

une Grande Cathédrale?, 1991

Painted Wood, Papier-Mâché, Inkjet Print Mounted on Dibond

Dimensions Variable

Acquisition 1992

© Huang Yong Ping / Adagp, Paris, 2025

IZABEL MENDÈS DA CUNHA

Sans Titre, 1999

Céramique Polychrome

Dimensions: 85 x 35 x 30 cm

© Izabel Mendès da Cunha

JIVYA SOMA MASHE

Fıshnet,2009

Photo © Cyril Marcilhacy

BERNIE KRAUSE & SOUNDWALK COLLECTIVE

Night Would Not Be Night Without the Cricket 2025

Site-Specificsound Installation

Dimensions Variables

A textile work : Olga de Amaral, Muro en rojos, 1982

DAVID HAMMONS

Sans Titre, 1997

Bois, Fer, Corde, Plastique, Miroir, Peinture

Dimensions: 143 × 40 × 127 cm

Acquisition 1999

Stone, Hair, Shoe Polish Box

Dimensions: 40.5 × 20 cm

Acquisition 1998

© David Hammons/ Adagp, Paris, 2025

ALESSANDRO MENDINI

Visage Archaïque, 2002

Golden Glass Paste Mosaic, Swarovski Crystal,

Pendant in Painted Metal, Gold, Glass, Velvet

Dimensions: 208 × 75 × 70 cm

Acquisition 2002

FREDDY MAMANI

Salón de Eventos, 2018

Version 2025

Protocol for Architectural Installation

Dimensions Variable

Acquisition 2024

2025 Update

ANDREA BRANZI

Gazebo, 2008

White Lacquered Steel Structure, Stainlesssteel grids, Glass

Shapes, Metalbed, and Hand-Crochetedwool Sweater and

Scoubidouswoven by Nicoletta Morozzi

Dimensions: 452 × 600 × 600 cm

Acquisition 2008

IZABEL MENDÈS DA CUNHA

Sans Titre, 1999

Céramique Polychrome

Dimensions: 85 x 35 x 30 cm

© Izabel Mendès da Cunha

JOAN MITCHELL

La Grande Vallée VI, 1984

Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 280×130 cm (×2) (diptych),

Collection of the Fondation Cartier Pour l’art Contemporain

© Fondation Joan Mitchell

A figure from the second generation of American abstract expressionism, Joan Michell first traveled then immigrated to Paris in 1955, where she discovered the paintings of Monet and the French Impressionists. In her work, she combined the influences of these two movements and sought to convey the emotion aroused by contact with nature. This major piece showcases this commitment to a “sentient” abstraction, expressed through deep colors and free forms. The painting, inspired by the artist’s childhood memories, evokes a remote marsh near Nantes, lit by an agitated sky. The floral colors are interrupted by streaks of black, indications of the artist’s distress at a time when she had recently lost a loved one.

JEAN NOUVEL BIOGRAPHY

Jean Nouvel Architect, born in Fumel (France) in 1945

After he enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux, Jean Nouvel entered the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1966 and obtained his degree in 1971. Assistant to the architect Claude Parent and inspired by urban planner and essayist Paul Virilio, he started his first architecture practice in 1970. Soon afterwards, he became a founding member of the French Architecture Union and the “Mars 1976” Movement whose purpose was to oppose the architects’corporatism.

His strong stances and somewhat provocative opinions on contemporary architecture in the urban context, together with his unfailing ability to inject originality into all the projects he undertakes, have formed his international image. Jean Nouvel’s work does not result from considerations of style or ideology, but from a quest to create a unique concept for a singular combination of people, place, and time. His contextual approach and ability to infuse a genuine uniqueness into all the projects he undertakes have consistently yielded buildings that transform their environments and indelibly mark the cities in which they are built.

His works have gained worldwide recognition through numerous prestigious French and International prizes and rewards. In 1989, the Arab World Institute in Paris was awarded the Aga-Khan Prize because of its role as “a successful bridge between French and Arab cultures”. In 2000, Jean Nouvel received the Lion d’Or of the Venice Biennale. In 2001, he received three of the highest international awards: the Royal Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), the Praemium Imperiale of Japan’s Fine Arts Association, and the Borromini Prize for the Culture and Conference Center in Lucerne. He was appointed Docteur Honoris Causa of the Royal College of Art in London in 2002. T he Agbar Tower in Barcelona was awarded the International Highrise Award 2006 in Frankfurt, “as it makes an outstanding contribution to the current debate on high-rises.” Jean Nouvel was the recipient of the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 2008. In France, he has received many awards, including the Gold Medal from the French Academy of Architecture, two “Équerres d’Argent” and the title of Officer of the Legion of Honor.

Among its main projects and studies in progress are the Sharaan Desert Resort (AlUla), the Shenzhen Opera, the Querola d’Ordino housing (Andorra), the Humanization and Expansion Projects of the Palais du Peuple (Paris) and the William Booth Residence (Marseille), the transformation of the Galeries Lafayette (Berlin), the Aviation Academy (Singapore), the Not a Hotel residential project (Yakushima) and the National Art Museum of China – NAMOC (Beijing)…

PRINCIPAL COMPLETED PROJECTS

Opera House (Lyon – 1993), Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain (Paris – 1994), Galeries Lafayette (Berlin – 1996), Culture and Congress Centre – KKL (Lucerne – 2000), Law court (Nantes - 2000), Dentsu Tower (Tokyo – 2002), Agbar Tower (Barcelona – 2005), Reina Sofia Museum extension (Madrid – 2005), musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac (Paris – 2006), Guthrie Theater (Minneapolis – 2006), Richemont Headquarters (Geneva – 2006), 40 Mercer housing building (New York – 2008), Concert Hall – DR (Denmarks Radio) (Copenhagen – 2009), Ferrari’s Factory (Maranello – 2009), One New Change (London – 2010), 100 11th avenue (New York – 2010), Sofitel Stephansdom (Vienna – 2010), City Hall (Montpellier – 2011), Doha High Rise Office Building (2011), Renaissance Barcelona Fira hotel (Barcelona – 2012), mixed use high-rise building One Central Park (Sydney – 2014), Imagine Institute (Paris – 2014), Anderson 18 & Nouvel Ardmore (Singapore – 2015), housing, office and retail tower The White Walls (Nicosia – 2015), Philharmonie de Paris (2015), Le Nouvel KLCC residential tower (Kuala Lumpur – 2016), Louvre Abu Dhabi (2017), Fondazione Alda Fendi (Rome – 2018), office tower La Marseillaise (Marseille – 2018), Stelios Ioannou Lerning Resource Center – University of Cyprus (Nicosia – 2018), Ycone residential tower (Lyon – 2019), National Museum of Qatar (Doha – 2019), 53W53 Tower integrating the extension of the MoMA galleries (New York – 2019), CEVA train stations (Geneva – 2019), Dolce&Gabbana Flagship Store (Seoul – 2021), Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière Gallery - Musée du quai Branly (Paris – 2021), offices and retails Henderson Cifi Tiandi – The Roof (Shanghai – 2021), Museum of Art Pudong – MAP (Shanghai – 2021), The Artists’ Garden, (Qingdao – 2021), the residential tower and hotel Rosewood (São Paulo – 2022), the office towers Duo and Hekla (Paris – 2022), Start Museum (Shanghai – 2022), facade and lobby of the pop-up Samsung Store 125 (Paris – 2024), Samsung Pavilion (Paris – 2024), UBS headquarters (Monaco – UBS), the Tencent Tower (Guangzhou, 2025).