Home      Discussion      Topics      Dictionary      Almanac
Signup       Login
Centre Georges Pompidou

Centre Georges Pompidou

Overview
Centre Georges Pompidou (sɑ̃tʁ ʒɔʁʒ pɔ̃pidu; also known as the Pompidou Centre in English) is a complex in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles
Les Halles
Les Halles is an area of Paris, France, located in the 1er arrondissement, just south of the fashionable rue Montorgueil. It is named for the large central wholesale marketplace, which was demolished in 1971, to be replaced with an underground modern shopping precinct, the Forum des Halles...

, rue Montorgueil
Rue Montorgueil
Rue Montorgueil is a trendy street in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris, France. Lined with famous restaurants, quaint cafés, bakeries , fish stores, cheese shops, wine shops, produce stands and flower shops, rue Montorgueil has become recognized as one of the best places for hip Parisians to...

 and the Marais
Le Marais
Le Marais is a historic district in Paris, France. Long the aristocratic district of Paris, it hosts many outstanding buildings of historic and architectural importance...

. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture
High-Tech Architecture
High-tech architecture, also known as Late Modernism or Structural Expressionism, is an architectural style that emerged in the 1970s, incorporating elements of high-tech industry and technology into building design. High-tech architecture appeared as a revamped modernism, an extension of those...

.
Discussion
Ask a question about 'Centre Georges Pompidou'
Start a new discussion about 'Centre Georges Pompidou'
Answer questions from other users
Full Discussion Forum
 
Recent Discussions
Encyclopedia
Centre Georges Pompidou (sɑ̃tʁ ʒɔʁʒ pɔ̃pidu; also known as the Pompidou Centre in English) is a complex in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles
Les Halles
Les Halles is an area of Paris, France, located in the 1er arrondissement, just south of the fashionable rue Montorgueil. It is named for the large central wholesale marketplace, which was demolished in 1971, to be replaced with an underground modern shopping precinct, the Forum des Halles...

, rue Montorgueil
Rue Montorgueil
Rue Montorgueil is a trendy street in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris, France. Lined with famous restaurants, quaint cafés, bakeries , fish stores, cheese shops, wine shops, produce stands and flower shops, rue Montorgueil has become recognized as one of the best places for hip Parisians to...

 and the Marais
Le Marais
Le Marais is a historic district in Paris, France. Long the aristocratic district of Paris, it hosts many outstanding buildings of historic and architectural importance...

. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture
High-Tech Architecture
High-tech architecture, also known as Late Modernism or Structural Expressionism, is an architectural style that emerged in the 1970s, incorporating elements of high-tech industry and technology into building design. High-tech architecture appeared as a revamped modernism, an extension of those...

.

It houses the Bibliothèque publique d'information, a vast public library, the Musée National d'Art Moderne
Musée National d'Art Moderne
The Musée National d'Art Moderne is the national museum for modern art of France. It is located in Paris and is housed in the Centre Pompidou in the 4th arrondissement of the city. Created in 1947, it was then housed in the Palais de Tokyo and moved to its current location in 1977...

which is the largest museum for modern art in Europe, and IRCAM
IRCAM
IRCAM is a European institute for science about music and sound and avant garde electro-acoustical art music. It is situated next to, and is organizationally linked with, the Centre Pompidou in Paris...

, a centre for music and acoustic research. Because of its location, the Centre is known locally as the Beaubourg (bobuʁ). It is named after Georges Pompidou
Georges Pompidou
Georges Jean Raymond Pompidou was a French politician. He was Prime Minister of France from 1962 to 1968, holding the longest tenure in this position, and later President of the French Republic from 1969 until his death in 1974.-Biography:...

, the President of France from 1969 to 1974 who decided its creation, and was officially opened on 31 January 1977 by President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
Valéry Marie René Georges Giscard d'Estaing is a French centre-right politician who was President of the French Republic from 1974 until 1981...

. The Centre Pompidou has had over 150 million visitors since 1977.

Architecture


The Centre was designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano
Renzo Piano
Renzo Piano is an Italian architect. He is the recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, AIA Gold Medal, Kyoto Prize and the Sonning Prize...

, the British architect couple Richard Rogers
Richard Rogers
Richard George Rogers, Baron Rogers of Riverside CH Kt FRIBA FCSD is a British architect noted for his modernist and functionalist designs....

 and Su Rogers, Gianfranco Franchini, the British structural engineer Edmund Happold
Edmund Happold
Professor Sir Edmund Happold , better known as Ted Happold, was a structural engineer and founder of Buro Happold.- Career :...

 (who would later found Buro Happold
Buro Happold
Buro Happold is a professional services firm providing engineering consultancy, design, planning, project management and consulting services for all aspects of buildings, infrastructure and the environment, with its head office in Bath, Somerset...

), and Irish structural engineer Peter Rice
Peter Rice
Peter Rice was an Irish structural engineer.Born in 52 Brigid Street, Dundalk in County Louth, he spent his childhood between the town of Dundalk, and the villages of Gyles' Quay and Inniskeen. He was educated at the Queen's University of Belfast where he received his primary degree, and spent a...

. The project was awarded to this team in an architectural design competition
Architectural design competition
An architectural design competition is a special type of competition in which an organization or government body that plans to build a new building asks for architects to submit a proposed design for a building. The winning design is usually chosen by an independent panel of design professionals...

, whose results were announced in 1971. Reporting on Rogers' winning the Pritzker Prize
Pritzker Prize
The Pritzker Architecture Prize is awarded annually by the Hyatt Foundation to honour "a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built...

 in 2007, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

noted that the design of the Centre "turned the architecture world upside down" and that "Mr. Rogers earned a reputation as a high-tech iconoclast with the completion of the 1977 Pompidou Centre, with its exposed skeleton of brightly colored tubes for mechanical systems. The Pritzker jury said the Pompidou "revolutionized museums, transforming what had once been elite monuments into popular places of social and cultural exchange, woven into the heart of the city."

Initially, all of the functional structural elements of the building were color-coded: green
Green
Green is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 520–570 nanometres. In the subtractive color system, it is not a primary color, but is created out of a mixture of yellow and blue, or yellow and cyan; it is considered...

 pipes are plumbing
Plumbing
Plumbing is the system of pipes and drains installed in a building for the distribution of potable drinking water and the removal of waterborne wastes, and the skilled trade of working with pipes, tubing and plumbing fixtures in such systems. A plumber is someone who installs or repairs piping...

, blue
Blue
Blue is a colour, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 440–490 nm. It is considered one of the additive primary colours. On the HSV Colour Wheel, the complement of blue is yellow; that is, a colour corresponding to an equal...

 ducts are for climate control, electrical wires are encased in yellow
Yellow
Yellow is the color evoked by light that stimulates both the L and M cone cells of the retina about equally, with no significant stimulation of the S cone cells. Light with a wavelength of 570–590 nm is yellow, as is light with a suitable mixture of red and green...

, and circulation elements
Circulation (architecture)
In the field of architecture, circulation refers to the way people move through and interact with a building. In public buildings, circulation is of high importance; for example, in buildings such as museums, it is key to have a floor plan that allows continuous movement while minimizing the...

 and devices for safety (e.g., fire extinguishers) are red
Red
Red is any of a number of similar colors evoked by light consisting predominantly of the longest wavelengths of light discernible by the human eye, in the wavelength range of roughly 630–740 nm. Longer wavelengths than this are called infrared , and cannot be seen by the naked eye...

. However, recent visits suggests that this color coding has been partially removed, and many of the elements are simply painted white.

Construction


The Centre was built by GTM and completed in 1977. The building cost 993 million 1972 French franc
French franc
The franc was a currency of France. Along with the Spanish peseta, it was also a de facto currency used in Andorra . Between 1360 and 1641, it was the name of coins worth 1 livre tournois and it remained in common parlance as a term for this amount of money...

s. Renovation work conducted from October 1996 to January 2000 was completed on a budget of 576 million 1999 francs.
Building specifications
Land area 2 hectares (4.9 acre)
Floor area 103,305 m2
Superstructure 7 levels
Height 42 m (Rue Beaubourg side), 45.5 m (Piazza side)
Length 166 m
Width 60 m
Infrastructure 3 levels
Dimensions Depth: 18 m; Length: 180 m; Width: 110 m
Materials used
Earthworks 300,000 m3
Reinforced concrete 50,000 m3
Metal framework 15,000 tonnes of steel
Façades, glass surfaces 11,000 m2
Opaque surfaces 7,000 m2

Exhibitions


Several major exhibitions are organized each year on either the first or sixth floors. Among them, many monograph
Monograph
A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author.It is often a scholarly essay or learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself...

s:

  • Paul Davis
    Paul Brooks Davis
    Paul Brooks Davis is an American graphic artist.-Biography:Paul Brooks Davis, better known as Paul Davis, was born in 1938 in Centrahoma, Oklahoma...

    (1977)
  • Henri Michaux
    Henri Michaux
    Henri Michaux was a highly idiosyncratic Belgian-born poet, writer, and painter who wrote in French. He later took French citizenship. Michaux is best known for his esoteric books written in a highly accessible style, and his body of work includes poetry, travelogues, and art criticism...

    (1978)
  • Dalí
    Salvador Dalí
    Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....

    (1979)
  • Pollock
    Jackson Pollock
    Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...

    (1982)
  • Bonnard
    Pierre Bonnard
    Pierre Bonnard was a French painter and printmaker, as well as a founding member of Les Nabis.-Biography:...

    (1984)
  • Kandinsky
    Wassily Kandinsky
    Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely-abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics...

    (1984)
  • Etienne-Martin (1984)
  • Klee
    Klee
    Klee , named after Paul Klee, is a German pop-band from Cologne.-Lineup 2002-2010 :* Suzie Kerstgens * Tom Deininger * Sten Servaes -Lineup 2010-present :...

    (1985)
  • Cy Twombly
    Cy Twombly
    Edwin Parker "Cy" Twombly, Jr. was an American artist well known for his large-scale, freely scribbled, calligraphic-style graffiti paintings, on solid fields of mostly gray, tan, or off-white colors...

    (1988)
  • Frank Stella
    Frank Stella
    Frank Stella is an American painter and printmaker, significant within the art movements of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction.-Biography:...

    (1988)
  • Andy Warhol
    Andy Warhol
    Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

    (1990)
  • Max Ernst
    Max Ernst
    Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...

    (1991)
  • Matisse
    Henri Matisse
    Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...

    (1993)
  • Joseph Beuys
    Joseph Beuys
    Joseph Beuys was a German performance artist, sculptor, installation artist, graphic artist, art theorist and pedagogue of art.His extensive work is grounded in concepts of humanism, social philosophy and anthroposophy; it culminates in his "extended definition of art" and the idea of social...

    (1994)
  • Kurt Schwitters
    Kurt Schwitters
    Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters was a German painter who was born in Hanover, Germany. Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic design, typography and what came to be known as...

    (1994)
  • Gerard Gasiorowski (1995)

  • Brâncuşi
    Constantin Brancusi
    Constantin Brâncuşi was a Romanian-born sculptor who made his career in France. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris...

    (1995)
  • Sanejouand
    Sanejouand
    Jean-Michel Sanejouand was born in Lyon, France, on July, 18, 1934.His work has many facets, ranging from environments to monumental sculptures, fromreadymade like objects to paintings of oneiric landscapes in which one of his sculptures stands....

    (1995)
  • Bob Morris
    Robert Morris (artist)
    Robert Morris is an American sculptor, conceptual artist and writer. He is regarded as one of the most prominent theorists of Minimalism along with Donald Judd but he has also made important contributions to the development of performance art, land art, the Process Art movement and installation...

    (1995)
  • Francis Bacon
    Francis Bacon
    Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...

    (1996)
  • Fernand Léger
    Fernand Léger
    Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...

    (1997)
  • David Hockney
    David Hockney
    David Hockney, CH, RA, is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer, who is based in Bridlington, Yorkshire and Kensington, London....

    (1998)
  • Philip Guston
    Philip Guston
    Philip Guston was a notable painter and printmaker in the New York School, which included many of the Abstract expressionists, such as Jackson Pollock and Willem De Kooning...

    (2000)
  • Picasso (2000)
  • Jean Dubuffet
    Jean Dubuffet
    Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet was a French painter and sculptor. His idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so called "low art" and eschewed traditional standards of beauty in favor of what he believed to be a more authentic and humanistic approach to image-making.-Life and work:Dubuffet was...

    (2001)
  • Roland Barthes
    Roland Barthes
    Roland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, anthropology and...

    (2002)
  • Max Beckmann
    Max Beckmann
    Max Beckmann was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement...

    (2002)
  • Nicolas de Stael
    Nicolas de Staël
    Nicolas de Staël was a painter known for his use of a thick impasto and his highly abstract landscape painting...

    (2003)
  • Sophie Calle
    Sophie Calle
    Sophie Calle is a French writer, photographer, installation artist, and conceptual artist. Calle's work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, and evokes the French literary movement of the 1960s known as Oulipo. Her work frequently depicts human vulnerability, and examines...

    (2003)
  • Cocteau (2003)
  • Philippe Starck
    Philippe Starck
    Philippe Patrick Starck is a French product designer and probably the best known designer in the New Design style...

    (2003)

  • Miró
    Joan Miró
    Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist born in Barcelona.Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride...

    (2004)
  • Aurelie Nemours
    Aurélie Nemours
    Aurélie Nemours was a Parisian painter.She made abstract geometrical paintings and was highly influenced by cubism....

    (2004)
  • Charlotte Perriand
    Charlotte Perriand
    Charlotte Perriand , was a French architect and designer. Her work aimed to create functional living spaces in the belief that better design helps in creating a better society...

    (2005)
  • Robert Rauschenberg
    Robert Rauschenberg
    Robert Rauschenberg was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. Rauschenberg is well-known for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations...

    (2006)
  • Jean-Luc Godard
    Jean-Luc Godard
    Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....

    (2006)
  • Yves Klein
    Yves Klein
    Yves Klein was a French artist considered an important figure in post-war European art. He is the leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre Restany...

    (2006)
  • Hergé
    Hergé
    Georges Prosper Remi , better known by the pen name Hergé, was a Belgian comics writer and artist. His best known and most substantial work is the 23 completed comic books in The Adventures of Tintin series, which he wrote and illustrated from 1929 until his death in 1983, although he was also...

    (2006)
  • Annette Messager
    Annette Messager
    Annette Messager is a French artist who was born in 1943. She is known mainly for her installation work which often incorporates photographs, prints and drawings, and various materials. Messager has exhibited and published her work extensively...

    (2007)
  • Richard Rogers
    Richard Rogers
    Richard George Rogers, Baron Rogers of Riverside CH Kt FRIBA FCSD is a British architect noted for his modernist and functionalist designs....

    (2007)
  • Samuel Beckett
    Samuel Beckett
    Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

    (2007)
  • David Claerbout
    David Claerbout
    David Claerbout is a Belgian artist working in the media of photography, video, sound, drawing and digital arts, though perhaps he is best known for his large scale video installations...

    (2007)
  • Julio González
    Julio González
    Julio González may refer to:* Julio César González , Mexican light-heavyweight boxer* Julio González , Cuban responsible for the 1990 Happy Land Fire...

    (2007)
  • Alberto Giacometti
    Alberto Giacometti
    Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father, Giovanni, was a well-known post-Impressionist painter...

    (2007)
  • Louise Bourgeois
    Louise Bourgeois
    Louise Joséphine Bourgeois , was a renowned French-American artist and sculptor, best known for her contributions to both modern and contemporary art, and for her spider structures, titled Maman, which resulted in her being nicknamed the Spiderwoman...

    (2008)
  • Pol Abraham
    Pol Abraham
    Pol Abraham was a French architect. He was born in Nantes, France .He graduated in 1920 from the atelier of Jean-Louis Pascal at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, then followed a course in the Ecole du Louvre from 1921 to 1924...

    (2008)

  • Titiana Trouvé (2008)
  • Miroslav Tichy
    Miroslav Tichý
    Miroslav Tichý was a photographer who from the 1960s to 1985 took thousands of surreptitious pictures of women in his hometown of Kyjov in the Czech Republic, using homemade cameras constructed of cardboard tubes, tin cans and other at-hand materials. Most of his subjects were unaware they are...

    (2008)
  • Dominique Perrault
    Dominique Perrault
    Dominique Perrault is a French architect. He became world known for the design of the French National Library, distinguished with the Mies van der Rohe Prize in 1996....

    (2008)
  • Jean Gourmelin (2008)
  • Jacques Villeglé
    Jacques Villeglé
    Jacques Villeglé, born Jacques Mahé de la Villeglé is a French mixed-media artist and affichiste famous for his alphabet with symbolic letters and decollage with ripped or lacerated posters...

    (2008)
  • Ron Arad
    Ron Arad (industrial designer)
    Ron Arad is an Israeli industrial designer, artist, and architect.-Biography:Arad attended the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem between 1971–73 and the Architectural Association in London from 1974–79...

    (2008)
  • Alexander Calder
    Alexander Calder
    Alexander Calder was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing mobile sculptures. In addition to mobile and stable sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry, jewelry and household objects.-Childhood:Alexander "Sandy" Calder was born in Lawnton,...

     (2009)
  • Kandinski
    Wassily Kandinsky
    Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely-abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics...

    (2009)
  • Pierre Soulages
    Pierre Soulages
    Pierre Soulages is a French painter, engraver, and sculptor.-Biography:Born in Rodez in 1919, Soulages also is known as "the painter of black" because of his interest in the colour, "...both a colour and a non-colour. When light is reflected on black, it transforms and transmutes it. It opens up...

    (2009)
  • Etienne-Martin (2010)
  • Lucian Freud
    Lucian Freud
    Lucian Michael Freud, OM, CH was a British painter. Known chiefly for his thickly impasted portrait and figure paintings, he was widely considered the pre-eminent British artist of his time...

    (2010)
  • Arman
    Arman
    Arman was a French-born American artist. Born Armand Pierre Fernandez in Nice, France, Arman is a painter who moved from using the objects as paintbrushes to using them as the painting itself...

    (2010)
  • Edvard Munch
    Edvard Munch
    Edvard Munch was a Norwegian Symbolist painter, printmaker and an important forerunner of expressionist art. His best-known composition, The Scream, is part of a series The Frieze of Life, in which Munch explored the themes of love, fear, death, melancholia, and anxiety.- Childhood :Edvard Munch...

    (2011)

Stravinsky Fountain


The nearby Stravinsky Fountain
Stravinsky Fountain
The Stravinsky Fountain is a whimsical public fountain ornamented with sixteen works of sculpture, moving and spraying water, representing the works of composer Igor Stravinsky...

  (also called the Fontaine des automates), on Place Stravinsky, features sixteen whimsical moving and water-spraying sculptures by Jean Tinguely
Jean Tinguely
Jean Tinguely was a Swiss painter and sculptor. He is best known for his sculptural machines or kinetic art, in the Dada tradition; known officially as metamechanics...

 and Niki de Saint-Phalle, which represent themes and works by composer Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....

. The black-painted mechanical sculptures are by Tinguely, the colored works by de Saint-Phalle. The fountain opened in 1983.

Video footage of the fountain appeared frequently throughout the French language
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 telecourse, French in Action
French in Action
French in Action is a French language course, developed by Professor Pierre Capretz of Yale University. The course includes workbooks, textbooks, and a 52-episode television series....

.

Place Georges Pompidou


The Place Georges Pompidou in front of the museum is noted for the presence of street performers
Busking
Street performance or busking is the practice of performing in public places, for gratuities, which are generally in the form of money and edibles...

, such as mime
Mime artist
A mime artist is someone who uses mime as a theatrical medium or as a performance art, involving miming, or the acting out a story through body motions, without use of speech. In earlier times, in English, such a performer was referred to as a mummer...

s and jugglers. In the spring, miniature carnivals are installed temporarily into the place in front with a wide variety of attractions: bands, caricature
Caricature
A caricature is a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness. In literature, a caricature is a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others.Caricatures can be...

 and sketch artists
Sketch (drawing)
A sketch is a rapidly executed freehand drawing that is not usually intended as a finished work...

, tables set up for evening dining, and even skateboarding competitions.

Provincial branch


In 2010, the Centre Georges Pompidou opened a provincial branch, the Centre Pompidou-Metz, in Metz
Metz
Metz is a city in the northeast of France located at the confluence of the Moselle and the Seille rivers.Metz is the capital of the Lorraine region and prefecture of the Moselle department. Located near the tripoint along the junction of France, Germany, and Luxembourg, Metz forms a central place...

 a city 170 miles east of Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. The new museum is part of an effort to expand the display of contemporary arts beyond Paris’s large museums. The new museum’s building was designed by the architect Shigeru Ban
Shigeru Ban
Shigeru Ban is an accomplished Japanese and international architect, most famous for his innovative work with paper, particularly recycled cardboard paper tubes used to quickly and efficiently house disaster victims...

 with a curving and asymmetrical pagoda-like roof topped by a spire and punctured by upper galleries. The 77 meters central spire is a nod to the year the Centre Georges Pompidou of Paris was built – 1977. The Centre Pompidou-Metz displays unique, temporary exhibitions from the collection of the Musée National d'Art Moderne
Musée National d'Art Moderne
The Musée National d'Art Moderne is the national museum for modern art of France. It is located in Paris and is housed in the Centre Pompidou in the 4th arrondissement of the city. Created in 1947, it was then housed in the Palais de Tokyo and moved to its current location in 1977...

, which are not presented in Parisian mother house. The first exhibition, called Masterpieces?, attracted over 800,000 visitors during the year following its opening.

Use in film and television


A fifth floor room of the building featured as the office of Holly Goodhead
Holly Goodhead
Dr. Holly Goodhead is a fictional character from the James Bond franchise, portrayed by Lois Chiles. She does not appear in any of the novels, solely appearing in the film version of Moonraker. However, her character is somewhat similar to Gala Brand, who is the female lead character in the...

 (played by Lois Chiles
Lois Chiles
Lois Cleveland Chiles is an American actress and former fashion model known for her role as Dr. Holly Goodhead in the 1979 James Bond film Moonraker.-Early life:...

) in the 1979 James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...

 film Moonraker
Moonraker (film)
Moonraker is the eleventh spy film in the James Bond series, and the fourth to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. The third and final film in the series to be directed by Lewis Gilbert, it co-stars Lois Chiles, Michael Lonsdale, Corinne Clery, and Richard Kiel...

, which in the film was scripted as being part of the space station of the villainous Hugo Drax
Hugo Drax
Sir Hugo Drax is a fictional character created by author Ian Fleming for the James Bond novel Moonraker. Fleming named him after his friend, Sir Reginald Drax. For the later film and its novelization, Drax was largely transformed by screenwriter Christopher Wood. In the film, Drax is portrayed by...

 (Michael Lonsdale
Michael Lonsdale
Michael Lonsdale , sometimes billed as Michel Lonsdale, is a French actor who has appeared in over 180 films and television shows....

).

Public transport

  • Nearby Métro
    Paris Métro
    The Paris Métro or Métropolitain is the rapid transit metro system in Paris, France. It has become a symbol of the city, noted for its density within the city limits and its uniform architecture influenced by Art Nouveau. The network's sixteen lines are mostly underground and run to 214 km ...

     stations: Rambuteau
    Rambuteau (Paris Metro)
    Rambuteau is a station on line 11 of the Paris Métro in the 3rd and 4th arrondissements in central Paris.The station opened as part of the original section of the line from Châtelet to Porte des Lilas on 28 April 1935...

    , Les Halles
    Les Halles (Paris Metro)
    Les Halles is a station on line 4 of the Paris Métro in the 1st arrondissement.The original station on 21 April 1908 as part of the first section of the line from Châtelet to Porte de Clignancourt to serve Les Halles . The station was rebuilt in 1977 about ten metres further east to interchange...

  • RER
    RER
    The RER is a rapid transit system in France serving Paris and its suburbs. The RER is an integration of a modern city-centre underground rail and a pre-existing set of commuter rail lines. It has several connections with the Paris Métro within the city of Paris. Within the city, the RER...

    : Châtelet – Les Halles

Further reading

  • Nancy Marmer, "Waiting for Gloire: Beaubourg Opens in Paris," Artforum, February 1977, pp. 52–59.

External links