All along Paris’s River Seine, private foundation money has been pouring into older Parisian institutions to make their buildings hospitable to large modern conceptual works.
Crowds flock to the Bourse du Commerce, for example: once a grain and later a labour market, it has now been transformed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando into clean, white spaces. The same has happened at the recently opened Cartier Foundation, previously a hotel and commercial spaces. French architect Jean Nouvel has redesigned it as a vast contemporary art museum. Inside, it is all sharp lines and glass.
The Petit Palais, in contrast, has preserved its fin-de-siècle curves and contorted ironwork. It’s calm and free to enter, as all Paris city museums are. But there is more to why the Petit Palais is a particularly Parisian exception to the ever-richer landscape of art along the Seine.
