"Nothing prepared us for it, everything prepared us for it." The premonitory words of the photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, the last to exhibit his works at the Pompidou Center, take on their full meaning at the beginning of the Parisian autumn. The emblematic Beaubourg, which has a touch of "palace of blue and red pipes," closes its doors for five years to "cleanse it" of asbestos, address corrosion, and reduce its carbon footprint, which is no small feat.
Approaching the 50th anniversary of its opening in 1977, the building conceived as "an architectural utopia" by the then almost unknown Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers will soon be designated as a "historical monument" (unusual for a modern construction), while the works for its update to the 21st century, budgeted at 448 million euros, are ongoing.
"Are you aware that this building will live for 500 years?", asked President George Pompidou to the daring architects of "project 493" (out of the 680 entries in the competition) after being selected by the jury, composed, among others, by Jean Prouvé, Oscar Niemeyer, and Philip Johnson. Renzo Piano himself recalled these days how he congratulated himself upon realizing that Beaubourg - with all its conduits and functional elements turned outward to free up interior space - stood tall in its first six months, although it took about ten years to weather the criticisms and be accepted as an integral part of the neighborhood that ended up lending its name to it.
"Beaubourg is happy", acknowledges the Italian architect to the magazine Artbasel, not without recognizing that the icon of high-tech architecture, which has been visited by over three million visitors every year (surpassed only in Paris by the Louvre and the Orsay Museum), clearly needed a renovation to continue navigating the turbulent waters of art and to compete with institutions like the Louis Vuitton Foundation and the renovated Cartier Foundation.
Piano recalls how the imposing transatlantic ships that docked in his native Genoa served as a distant inspiration for the "great urban machine" of Beaubourg, which surged like a wave in the sea of zinc rooftops of Haussmannian Paris. And while the interior and exterior "metamorphosis" - entrusted to architects Nicolas Moreau, Hiroko Kusunoki, and Frida Ecobedo - is underway, the Pompidou Center symbolically sets sail to conquer the world after having made stops in places as diverse as Malaga or Shanghai.
The next stop will be Seoul in 2026, and in 2027 the opening of the Pompidou Center in Paraná, designed by architect Solano Benítez in the "triple border" (Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina) and a stone's throw from the Iguazu Falls, is planned. On the horizon of 2030, apparently overcoming difficulties with local authorities, the first branch of the Parisian institution in North American territory is also emerging, specifically in Jersey City, in the shadow of Manhattan.
In France, the Pompidou Center in Metz will take the lead in the next five years, while the newly renovated Grand Palais opens its doors to some modern art collections and announces an unprecedented collaboration with the Louvre with the exhibition L'Objet ou Histoires d'Objet, featuring works from Picasso to Marcel Duchamp. With the program Constellations, the center aims to reach every corner of France, and its European "expansion" will include Madrid and Barcelona, with an exhibition dedicated to Henri Matisse organized by the Caixa Foundation.
"We are probably the world's largest art lender, with 6,000 to 7,000 works per year from a collection estimated at 150,000," boasts the president of the Pompidou Center, Laurent Le Bon, who has managed to silence the cultural world's outcry against the five-year closure of Beaubourg. "Everything will change so that nothing changes," emphasizes the main driver of the "metamorphosis" in statements to Le Figaro.
Le Bon warns that the "factory" conceived half a century ago by Piano and Rogers as an anti-museum will remain true to its open and multidisciplinary spirit, with a renewed focus on its celebrated library and a privileged space (on the fourth or fifth level, yet to be decided) dedicated to the Brancusi Workshop, with over 200 works by the Romanian sculptor: "It is our equivalent of the Mona Lisa, and it will be the cornerstone for interpreting all our collections."
Aware of the unease that the "closed for renovations" has stirred in the entire neighborhood, Le Bon hopes that the renovation of Beaubourg will be "a cultural act in itself", with an open perimeter for visiting the construction site and the uninterrupted use of the square for cultural events to make the immense void more bearable.