(A review of a place:)
The Pompidou Center (Le Centre Pompidou, "Beaubourg") (Centre George Pompidou (official site))
A discussion of the Pompidou Center as a site for contemporary art exhibitions, and much more.
The Pompidou Center opened in the beautiful Piano-Rogers building in the central IVth district in 1977 and has dominated the established French contemporary art museum scene ever since. Visiting the museum is a must -- if you don't like art, you can still enjoy the spectacular view from the top story of the transparent functional building. You can go the cinema, the huge library, the bookshop, the cafe, or the little design shop. Once you're in, I'm sure you'll get lured into one of the roughly ten exhibitions that go on simultaneously at any point in time. (Buy the "One Day at the Pompidou" ticket to freely roam the whole building and all exhibitions.) The museum has a most impressive premanent collection of works of art of the twentieth and twenty-first century. My favorite part are the most recent works - and since the collection is huge, I recommend skipping the first part. Most of the time, there is also a very large temporary exhibition on some artist or current crucial to the history of recent art. These are invariable amongst the best exhibitions on in Paris, because of their theme, their set-up, the care with which they are assembled, the space available to them, etc. The Pompidou Center is a must.
Some sample exhibitions (see Centre Pompidou (official site) for all practical information and present exhibitions):
The Big Bang (2005): a selection of the works of the permanent collection had been re-arranged thematically on the fifth floor (in a spirit similar to that of the Tate Modern in London). The geometrical work, the grids, the white room, the deformations: all rooms showed a wealth of contemporary or modern artworks which interacted closely to illustrate the chosen theme. (I went twice, but was not able to fully digest all the interesting interactions that were present. I remember fondly the minimal room with the Reich music, amongst many others.)
Dada (2005): many works of the Dada-movement (by Arp, Ernst, Joosten, Duchamp, Picabia, Man Ray) are assembled in a huge exhibition space divided up in cubicles. The flow of the public between the different works was messier and more Dada than in the busy linear queues that dominate some of the popular Pompidou shows. There was no fear here, amongst the mass of artworks gathered, to show the lesser paper crayon work, the sketch, the letter, the small newspaper article. The liberty, creativity and surplus of the Dada (that has since withered into oblivion) dominated the floor.
The Bechers (2004): the Pompidou managed to assemble a huge exhibition of the monumental works of the German photographers. The hundreds of photographs hung on the ground floor, in configurations similar to those in the carefully laid-out books of the Bechers. The photographs of silos, terrines, towers, the mining towns gave ample opportunity for comparison, for making out subtle differences and surprising similarities between the indrustrial park of some Western nations.
Copyright 2005, by Jan Troost
