Centre Pompidou - Current & Upcoming Exhibitions in 2007

The Centre National d'Art et Culture Georges Pompidou was the brainchild of President Georges Pompidou who wanted to create an original cultural institution in the heart of Paris completely focused on modern and contemporary creation, where the visual arts would rub shoulders with theatre, music, cinema, literature and the spoken word. Housed in the center of Paris in a building designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, whose architecture symbolizes the spirit of the 20th century, the Centre Pompidou first opened its doors to the public in 1977. After a period of renovation from 1997 to December 1999, it opened to the public again on January 1, 2000, with expanded museum space and enhanced reception areas. Since then it has once again become one of the most visited attractions in France. Some 6 million people pass through the Centre Pompidou's doors each year, a total of over 150 million visitors in its 25 years or so of existence.

Centre Pompidou always hosts exciting and innovative exhibitions. Here are some of the events currently being exhibited as well as some that are scheduled for the months to come.

Major Photography Show: A Donation by the Caisse des Dépôts, September 27-January 1 - The Centre Pompidou is very proud to present for the first time the collection of contemporary photography assembled by the French state bank, the Caisse des Depôts. Acquired by the Bank over a twenty-year period, the greatest part of this important photographic collection has been donated to the Centre Pompidou. Begun in the late 1980s, the collection consists of more than 750 photographs, the work of more than 200 photographers from France and elsewhere. The exhibition will present almost all of them, organized by the themes that have guided the formation of the collection – images of the government (Gronon, Gursky, Mason, Muntadas, among others); representations of France in its social and political aspects (Garnell Owens, Parr, Vitali); and the problematic relationship between fiction and illusion (Crewdson, Demand, Fischli and Weiss, de Gobert, Muniz and others). But beyond the intrinsic interest of these themes, the exhibition will also afford an opportunity to reconsider the very idea of the corporate collection, to examine the relationship between art and the economy, and to revisit the activities of the Caisse des Depôts as a patron of art.

Yves Klein, October 4-January 8 - Often considered simply a part of the French New Realism of the1960s and often symbolized by the IKB blue, the color of paint he created, the work of Yves Klein has yet to be fully discovered. This exhibition aims to reveal in all its scope the activity of an artist who declared that "My paintings are no more than the ashes of my art." Through photographs and films the exhibition will stress the importance of the idea of immateriality in Yves Klein's work, such as with his “invisible” works and his unrealized projects, which, in retrospect, acquire a central importance. (Yves Klein exhibitions will also be held at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Carcassonne, through September 24 and at La Coupole in Paris through January 27).

Robert Rauschenberg: Combines, October 11-Janaury 15 - The Centre Pompidou pays homage to Robert Rauschenberg, one of the great American artists of the post-war period, with an exhibition of what he calls "combines", collages or assemblages of diverse materials that reflect the artist's ambition to close the gap between art and life. Rauschenberg's practice of juxtaposing different media, ranging from photography to performance and confounding the distinction between painting and sculpture, contributed to a revolution in American art. Since the 1950s and his rejection of the then-dominant Abstract Expressionism, he has created one of the most complex and innovative bodies of work of the 20^th century. His unique approach, animated by the spirit of the Cubist collage and Dada humor, is revealed in fifty major works from the collections of such institutions as Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

Traces du Sacré, October 24 - In the latest of a series of landmark exhibitions that have been concerned with burning contemporary issues as with the history of the 20^th-century art, Centre Pompidou now addresses itself to the question of the sacred, a constant theme for artists past and present. From Gauguin to Bill Viola, artists have endeavored, in Heidegger's words, "to bring to mortal men the traces of the gods hidden in the opacity of the world."

Vija Celmins, October 25-January 29 - With this first retrospective exhibition of her drawings, Centre Pompidou will introduce visitors to the distinctive world of American artist Vija Celmins, born in Riga, Latvia, in 1938. Celmins is an unusual artist, the creator of an obsessively rigorous and thoroughly consistent body of work. The exhibition consists of some 60 drawings done since 1967, illustrating the whole course of the artist's development: from the earliest photorealist pieces, through the drawings of the sea's surface, the desert, the planets and the night sky, to her recent spider-webs. For the exhibition, works are being lent by leading American museums (MoMA; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Baltimore Museum of Art; and the Hirshhorn Museum of Modern Art, Washington, D.C.) and by distinguished private collections. The exhibition will then travel to the Armand Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.

Hergé, December 6-February - In December 2006 the public spaces of the Forum at the Centre Pompidou will be given over to the work of Hergé, the creator of Tintin. This free exhibition, organized in collaboration with the Hergé Foundation, will offer the public a chance to see the collection of Hergé's original drawings donated to the Centre by the Foundation. A double celebration, marking the entry of the first comics into the French national art collection and also the centenary of Hergés birth, which is in 2007, it marks, too, the opening of the Centre Pompidou's 30^th anniversary season.

BD Reporters, December 6-April - When the creators of the graphic novels (bandes desinées, or BD, as they are known in French) go on their travels, in France and abroad, they bring back to us in their drawings the new landscapes and new cities they have discovered, and the feelings these have inspired. The "BD Reporters" exhibition explores these new territories where really catches up with the comics. From the traveler's sketch book to final reportage, it presents the diversity of the genre through sketches, comics, photos, contact sheets and DVDs by the artists represented: Badouin, Cabu, De Crécy, Davodeau, Dupuy et Berberian, Faton, Ferrandez, , Harder, Hureau, Jano, Loustal, Mattotti, Matthys, Sacco, Schipper, Troub's and Wolinski.

The Movement of Images, through January 29 - The collection of the Centre Pompidou/Musée National d'Art Moderne, the largest in Europe, is presented in a striking new thematic hang that reflects the influence of cinema on the art of the twentieth century. Entitled "Le Mouvement des Images (The Movement of Images)", the new presentation exemplifies a displacement of the moving image from the cinema to the gallery, a shift that makes it possible to rethink film in a new context, without reference to its technical preconditions. The fundamental principles of the cinematic experience -- succession, projection, narrative and montage -- then no longer find themselves restricted to the traditional apparatus of film but may be applied to the reading of works of art more generally. Arts supposedly static, such as painting, sculpture, drawing, photography and architecture, are no longer so, a phenomenon accentuated by the advent of the digital age.

De l'Atelier à la Fabrique: the Permanent Collection, January 31 - Centre Pompidou will celebrate its thirtieth anniversary with a rehang of its permanent collection of modern and contemporary art, the leading collection of its kind in Europe. This will take place in two stages. On January 31, the modern art collection will be reorganized around the theme of "the studio", with an emphasis on the Museum's holdings of major paintings (among them Matisse, Picasso, Miró, Giacometti and Dubuffet) and on the emblematic locations and personalities of the world of art. On April 2, the contemporary art collection will be reorganized to echo the themes of "Airs de Paris", a major exhibition of contemporary art opening on the same day.

Annette Messager, February 21-May 14, 2007 - The Centre Pompidou is to present a major retrospective of the work of French artist Annette Messager, winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale of 2005. Her work, which has gained her an international reputation, combines intimacy with universality. The exhibition will follow the development of her artistic career from her invention of fictive identities in the early 1970s to her large installations in the 1990s. In parallel with the exhibition, Annette Messager will create a major new installation in the Forum, the ground floor of Centre Pompidou.

Pierre Klossowski, April 2-June 4, 2007 - The writer and philosopher Pierre Klossowski (1905-2001), a friend of Rilke and Georges Bataille, took up art on the prompting of Robert Lebel, André Masson and Alberto Giacometti. Centre Pompidou is to show drawings, prints and sculptures by Klossowski in Spring 2007. Klossowski also worked with a number of film directors, as writer or actor: with Pierre Zucca and Raoul Ruiz in the early 1970s and Pierre Coulibeuf, Michel Nuridsany and Alain Fleischer in the 1980s. A program of films in which Klossowski was involved will also be shown.

Samuel Beckett, through June 25, 2007 - After its celebrations of Jean Cocteau and Roland Barthes, the Centre Pompidou pays homage, on the centenary of his birth, to the great Irish novelist and playwright Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), who endeavored all his life to abolish the boundaries between the arts and the genres. The exhibition will explore the great themes of Beckett's work and relate his writing to the contemporary art from which it drew inspiration and which, in turn, drew inspiration from it, from Bram van Velde to Bruce Naumann, from Sol le Witt to Geneviève Asse, and from Ugo Rondinone to Tony Oursler. The exhibition aims to demonstrate the diversity of Beckett's writing and to explore the different facets of his career, more especially his work as a theater director.

Airs de Paris, April 2-May 27, 2007 - "Airs de Paris" is a multidisciplinary exhibition bringing together visual art, landscape, architecture and design, around the themes of the city and of urban life. It considers Paris as a point of convergence, where the exhibited artists may live or work or have intervened. The title echoes that of a piece by Marcel Duchamp, with a retrospective of whose work the Centre Pompidou opened in 1977. The exhibition includes work by fifty visual artists and sixteen architects and designers, dating from the 1970s to the present. Certain works will be specially produced for the occasion. As it prepares for the show, the Centre has set up an internet discussion forum, moderated by philosopher Elie During and sociologist Laurent Jeanpierre, which will host reflections on the themes of the exhibition by invited scholars and artists. The exhibition itself will be accompanied by a series of events -- performances, lectures and debates -- intended to foster dialogue between artists, philosophers and sociologists on the question of the urban in contemporary life.

Julio Gonzalez, June 27, 2007-October 8, 2007 - The work of the great Catalan artist Julio González (1876-1942) had a decisive influence on modern sculpture. Centre Pompidou, which has an exceptionally large holding of his paintings, sculptures, drawings and jewelry, now offers an opportunity to rediscover the work of the artists who introduced Picasso to metal sculpting. Marking the completion of a catalog raisonné of the Centre's entire holding of González' work, the exhibition will present the different stages of his career, from the very first figurative works, influenced by Puvis de Chavannes and classicism, through the masterly large-scale abstract and constructivist iron sculptures of the 1930s, to the tragic stone heads and the allegorical figures of the wartime years. Photographs and documentary records will contribute to a fuller understanding of the artists' life and work.

L'Atelier d'Alberto Giacometti: Collections de la Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti, September 9, 2007 - Thanks to the temporary loan of the holdings of the Alberto and Annette Giacometti Foundation, Centre Pompidou is able to present, for the first time, certain undiscovered aspects of Giacometti's art. Exhibited in conjunction with hitherto unknown works and unpublished documentation, paintings, sculptures, decorative objects, drawings, prints and writings will offer the viewer a new look at the artist's manner of work. At the heart of the exhibition will be Alberto Giacometti's studio, whose painted walls, furniture and tools are the property of the Foundation, established in December 2003.

Richard Rogers, October 3, 2007 - A retrospective exhibition is being devoted to Richard Rogers, who, with Renzo Piano, was the architect of Centre Pompidou. The exhibition will retrace a 40-year career, which has seen Rogers design buildings of different scales all over the world, all the time maintaining a unity of style. Recent and current projects will illustrate the enthusiastic mastery of constructive technique as an architect who has made a usage a priority, putting the human at the center of his work.

For more information about the Centre Pompidou, visit www.centrepompidou.fr. Media contact: Roya Nasser, +33 (0)1 44 78 49 08 or roya.nasser@centrepompidou.fr.