THE founder of a French luxury-goods empire, François Pinault had hoped to open his vast private modern-art collection to the public in France over a decade ago. He had selected a site for a brand-new museum on an island in the Seine, just outside Paris. But, exasperated with municipal bureaucracy and repeated delays, he cancelled the building project, gave up on Paris, and took his art to the Palazzo Grassi in Venice instead. “The rhythm of an entrepreneur”, he wrote in a cross letter to Le Monde at the time, “is that of his existence, of his age, of his impatience to realise a dream.”
Now 79, Mr Pinault has finally found a French home for that dream. On April 27th he and the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, unveiled the future site of the Pinault Collection: the city’s 18th-century Bourse de Commerce. A former corn exchange, with a listed cupola, it is currently used by the Paris Chamber of Commerce, and situated just to the west of Les Halles, in the heart of the capital. It will become the newest major contemporary-art museum in Paris when it opens in 2018.
Mr Pinault has asked Tadao Ando, a Japanese architect, who designed the original plans for the aborted museum on the Ile Seguin and renovated the Palazzo Grassi, to rework the interior space. Under a 19th-century steel-and-glass cupola, the Bourse comprises over 12,000 square metres (129,000 square feet) , of which about a third will be turned over to exhibits. This will be far bigger than the gallery area at the Palazzo Grassi, allowing Mr Pinault to show many more of the 3,000 works of art in his collection. Martin Bethenod, who currently runs the Piazzo Grassi in Venice, will become director of both Mr Pinault’s Italian and French outposts.
For Mr Pinault, it is a sweet homecoming. Welcoming the project, Ms Hildalgo called his museum a “gift” to the city, and said she would never have let him take his collection elsewhere had she been in charge. The Paris town hall, which will own the building and lease it to the Pinault family foundation for 50 years, on a renewable basis, scoured the city for premises to entice him back. Jean-Louis Missika, deputy mayor in charge of planning, and architect of “Reinventing Paris”, a competition to encourage cutting-edge design, invited Mr Pinault to visit the Bourse in April last year. If approved by the city assembly, the Paris town hall will invest €21m in the project; officials estimate that it will require €100m from Mr Pinault’s own pocket.
