The First, The Formative
The art world is watching… and the punters are too. On October 25, 2025, the Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain will open its doors to its new premises at 2 Place du Palais-Royal, directly opposite the Louvre (mind the broken glass).
Text by Caroline Issa
The move to open a new Fondation Cartier premises is a powerful reminder just how much this institution fundamentally reshaped the landscape of French contemporary art patronage. Founded in 1984 by Alain Dominique Perrin, then CEO of Cartier, and directed by Marie-Claude Beaud, the Fondation was a significant anomaly as the first private foundation in France dedicated to contemporary art. At a time when state institutions dominated, the Fondation Cartier operated with an “anything goes” curatorial model independent of the brand’s commercial interests. This curatorial freedom set a clear precedent that major luxury houses – from Prada, to Louis Vuitton, Max Mara, to Kering’s François-Henri Pinault – would later follow.
For forty years, this commitment to the innovative and the emerging has defined its programming. After a decade of nomadic exhibitions, the move to Jean Nouvel’s glass and steel structure on Boulevard Raspail in 1994 established it as a key cultural nexus, hosting important shows by artists like Sarah Sze, William Eggleston, and self-taught Bolivian architect Freddy Mamani, while its artist residency provided sanctuary to figures like Fabrice Hyber and Huang Yong Ping.
Now, the institution is entering its next chapter with a new building, again designed by Pritzker Prize winner Jean Nouvel as a subversion of the traditional white cube. In a panel talk on October 21, 2025, held to inaugurate the space, Fondation Cartier’s Director of Strategic Projects and International Programmes Beatrice Grenier suggested the architecture itself acts as a porous membrane, introducing “an openness onto the city,” where visitors are in conversation not only with “the facades of the Louvre” but also the “passerbys walking on the sidewalk”.
The building's modular design, with walls painted grey for constant reconfiguration, reflects the institution's core philosophy, which, according to Grenier, is about challenging the status quo. “The Louvre is object-focused and encyclopaedic, showing the world in terms of a material manifestation of culture. We’re saying something very different: that exhibition-making is at the centre of culture, a succession of ideas elaborated with thinkers, artists and architects, and subject to constant change.”
This philosophy is immediately apparent in the inaugural show, the “Exposition Générale.” Curated by Grazia Quaroni and Grenier, the exhibition draws on the 1,500+ work permanent collection, featuring nearly six hundred pieces by over one hundred artists. The title itself is a subtle historical parallel, nodding to the building's past life as a department store, where “all the merchandising was exhibited together. It invented a new way of showing objects," noted Quaroni. She also stressed that the curatorial process was not a simple act of “selection,” but “joyful yet tortuous” process of choice, aimed at “explaining the integrality of the activities that the fund has run for 40 years”.
The exhibition is structured around four recurring threads from the Fondation's history: architecture, nature and the environment, sciences (including social science and philosophy), and “Making Things,” which embraces media “sometimes not considered to be fine arts - textile, ceramics or comics”. The scenography, designed by the studio Formafantasma, treats the new building not as a museum, but as a cityscape. Designer Simone Farresin highlighted the “direct link between the urban environment and the exhibition space”. This non-linear, platform-based architecture transforms the visitor experience from a guided tour into an urban exploration.
“When you see the space, think about the idea of the city and how you navigate a city you don't know,” explains Formafantasma's Andrea Trimarchi. “It was almost impossible... to create a linear narrative. It opened up very different design choices”.
The result is an exhibition design that encourages visitors to "find their own path" through what the curators call "floating galleries," where objects across multiple floors are in constant dialogue. Farresin describes this as a "panorama," where one can see a nearby artwork, "but also plenty of others on the horizon when you look down". To prevent this freedom from becoming disorienting, Formafantasma introduced "lanterns" and custom-made lighting elements that act as "signals in the space," much like landmarks in a city. The designers also introduced a sense of intimacy through materiality, using textile as a background for artworks because it “gives a sense of intimacy” and “communicates a sense of kindness that we love”.
This comprehensive undertaking is not just a display of the Fondation's history but a confident declaration of its future. In a moment where cultural authority is increasingly decentralised, yet where luxury brands are contracting into increasingly elite circles, Cartier goes against the current in a demonstration of art’s collective nature – and capacity to evolve. To do so involves taking care and allowing for freedom; in the words of Quaroni, “imagination and precision go together”. ◉